1. Saving stuff before it vanishes down the memory hole.

    31 January 2017

    UPDATE - 20170302 - Added Firefox plugin for the Internet Archive.

    UPDATE - 20170205 - Added Chrome plugin for the Internet Archive.

    Note: This article is aimed at people all across the spectrum of levels of experience with computers.  You might see a lot of stuff you already know; then again, you might learn one or two things that hadn't showed up on your radar yet.  Be patient.

    In George Orwell's novel 1984, one of his plot points of the story was something called the Memory Hole. They were slots all over the building in which Winston Smith worked, into which documents which the …

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  4. Year 1 under an authoritarian regime.

    29 January 2017

    UPDATE: 20170612

    Due to extenuating circumstances, I don't think I can keep updating this entry.  For the sake of my mental, emotional, and physical health I'm going to let it go.  Lifeline, Edison, and other parts of me are going to continue monitoring and archiving the USian political situation but I, the organic core of everything, need to step back and do other things.

    UPDATED: 20170604

    In response to reading this tweet, I thought I'd type up the following list, and add links to some stuff I've observed.  I'll update it as necessary.  List beneath the cut.

    1. They will …

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  5. Prediction: The United States of America will be at war again by 26 July 2017.

    28 January 2017

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA512

    I very much want to be wrong.

    Within 180 days of 0000 hours UTC, Friday, 27 January 2017, the United States of
    America will declare war once again.  That puts it at Wednesday, 26 July 2017
    at 0000 hours UTC.  I do not know for sure, but countries in the Middle East
    seem the most likely targets.

    This seems due, in part, that the USA seems to be trying to start the Crusades
    again (George W. Bush tried once).  The Trump administrations' public and
    flagrant distrust, disapproval, and seeming pants-shitting-fear of Muslims
    around the …

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  6. #datarefuge in the Bay Area - 11 February 2017.

    28 January 2017

    UPDATE: 20170131 - The Eventbrite page for this event has gone live!  Sign up!

    I haven't had time to write about #datarefuge yet, in part because people a lot closer to the matter have been doing so, and much better than I could at the moment.  An entire movement has arisen around scientific data being 451'd because it's politically inconvenient, and not many of us know if it's being erased or just shut down.  We also don't know for certain if it's being copied elsewhere for safekeeping so we're doing it ourselves.  To do my part, I've been communicating with some …

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  7. Autostarting Kodi on an Arch Linux media box.

    25 January 2017

    Not too long ago, when the USB key I'd built a set-top media machine died from overuse I decided to rebuild it using Arch Linux with Kodi as the media player.  The trick, I keep finding every time, lies in getting Kodi to start up whenever the machine starts up.  I think I've re-figured that out six or seven times by now, and each time after it works I forget all about it.  So, I guess I'd better write it down for once so that I've got a snapshot of what I did in case I need to do it …

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  8. Huginn: Writing a simple agent network.

    23 January 2017

    EDIT: 20170123 - My reviewers have suggested some edits to the article, many of which I've applied.

    It's been a while since I wrote a Huginn tutorial, so let's start with a basic one to get you comfortable with the idea of building an agent network.  This agent network will run every half hour, poll a REST API endpoint, and e-mail you what it gets.  You'll have to have access to an already running Huginn instance that can send outbound e-mail.  This post is going to be kind of lengthy, but that's because I'm laying out some fundamentals.  Once you understand …

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  9. Richard Spencer, face punching, and violence.

    21 January 2017

    I shouldn't have to write this disclaimer, but here we go anyway: I am not one of these people and never will be.  I mirrored the documents in question because data has a way of disappearing from the Net when lawyers get involved, a phenomenon called HTTP Error 451 (Unavailable for legal reasons), and we're already seeing potentially damaging and damning information quietly going away.  So, if you're going to say that because I have a copy of a particular document on my website I support the author when I just said I didn't, please pull your head out of …

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  10. Inauguration Day 2017

    20 January 2017

    "And eventually, there aren't any real people left. Just robots pretending to give a shit."

    "Perhaps. Depends on the population dynamics, among other things. But I'd guess that at least one thing an automaton lacks is empathy; if you can't feel, you can't really relate to something that does, even if you act as though you do. Which makes it interesting to note how many sociopaths show up in the world's upper echelons, hmm? How ruthlessness and bottom-line self-interest are so lauded up in the stratosphere, while anyone showing those traits at ground level gets carted off into detention with …

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