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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: October 17th, 2025

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  • Once Upon a Time in America. Maybe I watched a bad version but it made little sense and the ending was dreadful.

    Reading about it right now on wikipedia I probably saw the ‘condensed’ version which was savaged by the critics:

    Some critics compared shortening the film to shortening Richard Wagner’s operas, saying that works of art that are meant to be long should be given the respect they deserve. In his 1984 review, Roger Ebert gave the uncut version four stars out of four and wrote that it was “an epic poem of violence and greed”, but described the American theatrical version as a “travesty”. Furthermore, he gave the American theatrical version one star out of four, calling it “an incomprehensible mess without texture, timing, mood, or sense”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_America


  • I see this with flatpaks, the solution might be to grant permission to the app to the part of the filesystem your dragging from with flatseal/cmdline.

    HOWEVER I do think the desktop is missing a pop-up which offers to do this for you when it happens. This is how android does it when an app needs access outside its own files, you just get a prompt to allow it.

    This is the sandbox future - it’s safer and you can trust that apps can’t go snooping around your system but users shouldn’t need to fiddle with perms all the time to get stuff done.




  • The EFF have a page on this, setting out the threats:

    https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-16-years-under-dmca

    …which is mostly a link to:

    https://www.eff.org/files/2014/09/16/unintendedconsequences2014.pdf

    …whose summary reads as follows.

    The “anti-­‐circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. The law was ostensibly intended to stop copyright infringers from defeating anti-­‐piracy protections added to copyrighted works.[1] In practice, the anti-­‐circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities. As a result, the DMCA has become a serious threat to several important public policy priorities:

    The DMCA Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.

    Experience with section 1201 demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team of researchers, and prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public.

    The DMCA Jeopardizes Fair Use.

    By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, the DMCA grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public’s fair use rights. Already, the movie industry’s use of encryption on DVDs has curtailed consumers’ ability to make legitimate, personal-­‐use copies of movies they have purchased.

    The DMCA Impedes Competition and Innovation.

    Rather than focusing on pirates, some have wielded the DMCA to hinder legitimate competitors. For example, the DMCA has been used to block aftermarket competition in laser printer toner cartridges, garage door openers, videogame console accessories, and computer maintenance1 services. Similarly, Apple has used the DMCA to tie its iPhone devices to Apple’s own software and services.












  • I like the pomodoro technique. Breaks your time up into focussed chunks so you guarantee to make some progress on one thing within a chunk and helps build momentum.

    If you get into routine you may even be able to plan whole days e.g. spend 8 pomodoros on your essay and the remaining pomodoros can be distributed across chores, other small admin.

    The focus helps avoid overwhelm. You can put other concerns out of your mind whilst in a pomodoro as you know they will get their own pomodoro later.

    Can also be adjusted for your energy levels, maybe some days you’re only going to get a few pomodoros done but that’s ok, you’re still moving forward.

    The regular enforced breaks are also helpful to avoid sitting still for too long and paying attention to bodily needs.

    Doesn’t help with prioritisation directly but knowing you’ve got a fixed number of daily pomodoros to ‘spend’ may help you think about where your time goes in a systematic manner.