#self-development tools

[danielsperaw]

How to Stop Feeling Irritated! By that Crazy Party, Jackhammer or Barking Dog.

A high-pitched barking suddenly shattered the quiet afternoon. The neighbor's new dog was yapping with a ridiculous ferocity.

And it continued for hours. I finally walked out and looked over the fence; he was barking at a bug!

The next morning, he started again early and kept at it on and off all day and into the night. He barked as if his life depended on it, and I found myself sending more than a few negative thoughts toward him, the neighbor, and life in general. I just could not understand why they were not bothered! Just shut him up!! Please!!!

And then, one afternoon, I realized he had not been barking for a while. Several days? And my next thought was, Did he die? Oh, please, God!

Later that day, I heard him barking again. The noise was just as piercing; he went on for just as long, and I realized he had never stopped! It was me that had stopped being bothered!

Whether that irritating noise is a loud party, jackhammer or dog, it is not the noise that bothers us but the negative feelings they spark. If those feelings were not within us, we would not be feeling them. We would be at peace.

When we do feel them, we immediately tighten our body and breath to help us stop feeling that way. Many of us also (desperately?) distract ourselves by doing or thinking about something/anything else.

This is all called repression, and it leaves those negative feelings within us waiting for the next irritation and general upset.

Okay, here is the part you might not like. To eliminate those feelings and free ourselves, stop fighting, stop distracting and start feeling.

3 Steps to Peace

1) The first step is counter-intuitive: give the noise permission to be there; allow it to be loud and irritating (I know, crazy, but try it anyway).

2) The next step is to relax. You will find yourself tensed against the noise; release more of that tightness each time you breathe out.

* Note - Your mind will probably keep skipping away; gently bring yourself back to breathing out the tension.

3) And let go of those negative emotions by letting yourself feel them. Every moment you let yourself feel awful frees you that much more.

One immediate upside is that your inner strength will increase (because facing what we do not want to face always makes us stronger).

And there will come a time when that irritation/anger is gone. I promise.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada’s ground-breaking, hamstrung repair and interop laws

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

When the GOP trifecta assumes power in just a few months, they will pass laws, and those laws will be terrible, and they will cast long, long shadows.

This is the story of how another far-right conservative government used its bulletproof majority to pass a wildly unpopular law that continues to stymie progress to this day. It's the story of Canada's Harper Conservative government, and two of its key ministers: Tony Clement and James Moore.

Starting in 1998, the US Trade Rep embarked on a long campaign to force every country in the world to enact a new kind of IP law: an "anticircumvention" law that would criminalize the production and use of tools that allowed people to use their own property in ways that the manufacturer disliked.

This first entered the US statute books with the 1998 passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), whose Section 1201 established a new felony for circumventing an "access control." Crucially, DMCA 1201's prohibition on circumvention did not confine itself to protecting copyright.

Circumventing an access control is a felony, even if you never violate copyright law. For example, if you circumvent the access control on your own printer to disable the processes that check to make sure you're using an official HP cartridge, HP can come after you.

You haven't violated any copyright, but the ink-checking code is a copyrighted work, and you had to circumvent a block in order to reach it. Thus, if I provide you a tool to escape HP's ink racket, I commit a felony with penalties of five years in prison and a $500k fine, for a first offense. So it is that HP ink costs more per ounce than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

This was clearly a bad idea in 1998, though it wasn't clear how bad an idea it was at the time. In 1998, chips were expensive and underpowered. By 2010, a chip that cost less than a dollar could easily implement a DMCA-triggering access control, and manufacturers of all kinds were adding superfluous chips to everything from engine parts to smart lightbulbs whose sole purpose was to transform modification into felonies. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business-model."

So when the Harper government set out to import US-style anticircumvention law to Canada, Canadians were furious. A consultation on the proposal received 6,138 responses opposing the law, and 54 in support:

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/04/copycon-final-numbers/

And yet, James Moore and Tony Clement pressed on. When asked how they could advance such an unpopular bill, opposed by experts and the general public alike, Moore told the International Chamber of Commerce that every objector who responded to his consultation was a "radical extremist" with a "babyish" approach to copyright:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216

As is so often the case, history vindicated the babyish radical extremists. The DMCA actually has an official way to keep score on this one. Every three years, the US Copyright Office invites public submissions for exemptions to DMCA 1201, creating a detailed, evidence-backed record of all the legitimate activities that anticircumvention law interferes with.

Unfortunately, "a record" is all we get out of this proceeding. Even though the Copyright Office is allowed to grant "exemptions," these don't mean what you think they mean. The statute is very clear on this: the US Copyright Office is required to grant exemptions for the act of circumvention, but is forbidden from granting exemptions for tools needed to carry out these acts.

This is headspinningly and deliberately obscure, but there's one anecdote from my long crusade against this stupid law that lays it bare. As I mentioned, the US Trade Rep has made the passage of DMCA-like laws in other countries a top priority since the Clinton years. In 2001, the EU adopted the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 copy-pastes the provisions of DMCA 1201.

In 2003, I found myself in Oslo, debating the minister who'd just completed Norway's EUCD implementation. The minister was very proud of his law, boasting that he'd researched the flaws in other countries' anticircumvention laws and addressed them in Norway's law. For example, Norway's law explicitly allowed blind people to bypass access controls on ebooks in order to feed them into text-to-speech engines, Braille printers and other accessibility tools.

I knew where this was going. I asked the minister how this would work in practice. Could someone sell a blind person a tool to break the DRM on their ebooks? Of course not, that's totally illegal. Could a nonprofit blind rights group make such a tool and give it away to blind people? No, that's illegal too. What about hobbyists, could they make the tool for their blind friends? No, not that either.

OK, so how do blind people exercise their right to bypass access controls on ebooks they own so they can actually read them?

Here's how. Each blind person, all by themself, is expected to decompile and reverse-engineer Adobe Reader, locate a vulnerability in the code and write a new program that exploits that vulnerability to extract their ebooks. While blind people are individually empowered to undertake this otherwise prohibited activity, they must do so on their own: they can't share notes with one another on the process. They certainly can't give each other the circumvention program they write in this way:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

That's what a use-only exemption is: the right to individually put a locked down device up on your own workbench, and, laboring in perfect secrecy, figure out how it works and then defeat the locks that stop you from changing those workings so they benefit you instead of the manufacturer. Without a "tools" exemption, a use exemption is basically a decorative ornament.

So the many use exemptions that the US Copyright Office has granted since 1998 really amount to nothing more than a list of defects in the DMCA that the Copyright Office has painstaking verified but is powerless to fix. We could probably save everyone a lot of time by scrapping the triennial exemptions process and replacing it with an permanent sign over the doors of the Library of Congress reading "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

All of this was well understood by 2010, when Moore and Clement were working on the Canadian version of the DMCA. All of this was explained in eye-watering detail to Moore and Clement, but was roundly ignored. I even had a go at it, publicly picking a fight with Moore on Twitter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130407101911if_/http://eaves.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/Conversations%20between%20@doctorow%20and%20@mpjamesmoore.jpg

Moore and Clement rammed their proposal through in the next session of Parliament, passing it as Bill C-11 in 2012:

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

This was something of a grand finale for the pair. Today, Moore is a faceless corporate lawyer, while Clement was last seen grifting covid PPE (Clement's political career ended abruptly when he sent dick pics to a young woman who turned out to be a pair of sextortionists from Cote D'Ivoire, and was revealed as a serial sex-pest in the ensuing scandal:)

https://globalnews.ca/news/4646287/tony-clement-instagram-women/

Even though Moore and Clement are long gone from public life, their signature achievement remains a Canadian disgrace, an anchor chain tied around the Canadian economy's throat, and an impediment to Canadian progress.

This week, two excellent new Canadian laws received royal assent: Bill C-244 is a broad, national Right to Repair law; and Bill C-294 is a broad, national interoperability law. Both laws establish the right to circumvent access controls for the purpose of fixing and improving things, something Canadians deserve and need.

But neither law contains a tools exemption. Like the blind people of Norway, a Canadian farmer who wants to attach a made-in-Canada Honeybee tool to their John Deere tractor is required to personally, individually reverse-engineer the John Deere tractor and modify it to talk to the Honeybee accessory, laboring in total secrecy:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/12/canada_right_to_repair/

Likewise the Canadian repair tech who fixes a smart speaker or a busted smartphone – they are legally permitted to circumvent in order to torture the device's repair codes out of it or force it to recognize a replacement part, but each technician must personally figure out how to get the device firmware to do this, without discussing it with anyone else.

Thus do Moore and Clement stand athwart Canadian self-reliance and economic development, shouting "STOP!" though both men have been out of politics for years.

There has never been a better time to hit Clement and Moore's political legacy over the head with a shovel and bury it in a shallow grave. Canadian technologists could be making a fortune creating circumvention devices that repair and improve devices marketed by foreign companies.

They could make circumvention tools to allow owners of consoles to play games by Canadian studios that are directly sold to Canadian gamers, bypassing the stores operated by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and the 30% commissions they charge. Canadian technologists could be making diagnostic tools that allow every auto-mechanic in Canada to fix any car manufactured anywhere in the world.

Canadian cloud servers could power devices long after their US-based manufacturers discontinue support for them, providing income to Canadian cloud companies and continued enjoyment for Canadian owners of these otherwise bricked gadgets.

Canada's gigantic auto-parts sector could clone the security chips that foreign auto manufacturers use to block the use of third party parts, and every Canadian could enjoy a steep discount every time they fix their cars. Every farmer could avail themselves of third party parts for their tractors, which they could install themselves, bypassing the $200 service call from a John Deere technician who does nothing more than look over the farmer's own repair and then types an unlock code into the tractor's console.

Every Canadian who prints out a shopping list or their kid's homework could use third party ink that sells for pennies per liter, rather than HP's official colored water that cost more than vintage Veuve Cliquot.

A Canadian e-waste dump generates five low-paid jobs per ton of waste, and that waste itself will poison the land and water for centuries to come. A circumvention-enabled Canadian repair sector could generate 150 skilled, high-paid community jobs that saves gadgets and the Earth, all while saving Canadians millions.

Canadians could enjoy the resliency that comes of having a domestic tech and repair sector, and could count on it through pandemics and Trumpian trade-war.

All of that and more could be ours, except for the cowardice and greed of Tony Clement and James Moore and the Harper Tories who voted C-11 into law in 2012.

Everything the "radical extremists" warned them of has come true. It's long past time Canadians tore up anticircumvention law and put the interests of the Canadian public and Canadian tech businesses ahead of the rent-seeking enshittification of American Big Tech.

Until we do that, we can keep on passing all the repair and interop laws we want, but each one will be hamstrung by Moore and Clement's "felony contempt of business model" law, and the contempt it showed for the Canadian people.

Image: JeffJ (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tony_Clement_-_2007-06-30_in_Kearney,_Ontario.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

--

Jorge Franganillo (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duga_radar_system-_wreckage_of_electronic_devices_(37885984654).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[mintytrifecta]

Like one of the reasons I'm so entranced by daring is a character is how he's so self-centered but sooooo unapologetically kind and earnest to other people. He acts with a frankly egregious sense of grandeur that is definitely in part an act an act, yes, but he's willing to admit his mistakes so easily. He's so quick to accept and forgive and it's so clear the happiness of other people is something he deeply values. Prince Charmings are raised to be grand heroes with zero fear, but at their core they're about helping others and being there for them. Daring might not be a destined prince charming anymore, but he exemplifies the core aspect of kindness for kindness's sake without ever asking for anything in return. There's something poetic about it. He couldn't save someone when acting as Prince Charming, but when he was just being himself, genuinely just trying to help someone in danger, he did save them. Daring has a bleeding heart and hides it under the illusion of self-importance. I don't believe that it's all an act, I think he does very much love himself (even if it can get unhealthy) but it's so clear he loves other people just as much. There's a reason he's the gold standard of prince Charmings, and it's not his brevity or combat skills.

[st-hedge]

It wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card that I’d draw V again. Anyway I’ll go ahead ramble in the tags

[nervouscunt]

Sad targ women.png pt ? + a Naerys moodboard Starting the new year with my ever suffering bby girl Naerys, genuinely I'm so feral about her and that era of targs, they're my fav sickos. This is brought to you cutesy of a recent visit to a monastery which reminded me of how much I love church icons.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

At this point I don't know how to explain what protagonists are and how they work

[viradahlen]

"We got off the helicopter and approached the elevator. The facility’s director was there, waiting for us.

I remember nothing about him now, not even his name. Regardless of what was said officially, from that day on, the Arklay Research Facility belonged to Birkin and I. As its chief researchers, we had free rein over the direction of the institute. This was just as Spencer willed it, of course. He had chosen us for this purpose.

Neither of us gave the director a second glance as we boarded the elevator. I had memorized the layout of the structure the day before, and Birkin was off in his own little world. One would have expected the director to reproach me for this, but in fact, he showed no reaction at all.

I was an arrogant young man back then and didn’t give a second thought to the director’s actions. Thinking back, though, I imagine it was because he knew Spencer’s mind in the matter far better than I. He knew that I was no more than a puppet."

-Wesker relating his first visit to Arklay and the Mansion (July 31th 1978).

[natasa-pantovic]

Free Mindfulness Resources from AoL Mindfulness Courses on Goodreads.

[stromuprisahat]

Ruin and Rising- Chapter 1

*facepalms in memory*

Yeah, who could've guessed enemy army won't decently walk in regular lines, politely waiting to get razed one by one...

Even if nichevo'ya couldn't fly your "plan" was a total bullshit.

[danielsperaw]

Feeling Defensive?  Give the Discomfort Back to Them — Easily (and increase your inner strength).

“You like that song?” she asked using her best what's-wrong-with-you tone of voice.

I stomped down on a rush of defensiveness.

That awful tone of voice always has me scrambling, trying to come up with some logical, hopefully significant reasons to show that I have good taste and that my choice is a good one.

She cleared her throat, waiting for an answer. Not having one, I looked away.

Our society near demands that we appear logical at all times and that we have good reasons for our every choice. And to admit that the basement in any way runs the upper stories is close to heresy.

So, go ahead pile the wood around the stake. I confess.

Really, I have no idea why I love peppermint-fudge-ripple ice cream and dislike, okay hate, that peanut-chip, cookie-frosted cone.

But it is not just ice cream, and it is not just me.

A study showed that when most people buy a car, they do it emotionally: they see it, fall in love and sign the papers. At that point, they begin coming up with all the clearly logical reasons why it was the best choice, the only choice.

I heard her ask, “You’re not going to answer me?”

Since I did not choose to like this song, what could I tell her?

So, I took a breath, looked up, and asked, “You don’t like this song?”

She opened her mouth, paused, and finally stammered, “I, I don’t know. I guess it's alright.”

Every 8 days, a post like this sent directly to your inbox (free of spam):

The Power to Change

.

[kittyplushy]

prop

[brightquang]

Article 70(15) of Constitution of SRV

According to Article 70 (15) of the Constitution of the Socialism Republic of Vietnam held a Referendum which is why the Geneva Conference in 1954, and the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 requested the referendum which is why the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam had never carried out Article 70(15) this expressed to National Reconciliation by the referendum which is different with the national general elections. If the Socialist Republic of Vietnam organized a Referendum, if someone stood up against the right to self-determination, the one must be punished by the current law and constitution. Finally, Vietnam wishes to develop technology and science into modern civilized Vietnam. So, the government of Vietnam ought to organize the referendum quickly, but the Socialist Republic of Vietnam didn't enforce both international treaties. Let the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam nationalize the property, detain, and appropriate his business tools. Let the plaintiff Bright Quang carry out the Geneva Conference that has agreed in this Article said: Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina (with (1) declarations by Cambodia, France, Laos, the State of Viet-Nam and the United States of America. (2) the Agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Viet-Nam between the Commander--in-Chief of the People's Army of Viet-Nam and the Commander-in-Chief of the French Union Forces in Indo-China, signed at Geneva (3) the Agreement on the cessation of hostilities on 20 July 1954 (with maps); in Laos between the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the French Union in Indo-China, on the one hand, and the Commanders-in-Chief of the fighting units of " Pathet Lao” and of the People's Army of Viet-Nam, on the other hand, done at Geneva on 20 July 1954, and (4) the Agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Cambodia between the Commander-in-Chief of the Khmer National Armed Forces, on the one hand, and the Commanders-in-chief of the Khmer Resistance Forces and of the Viet-Namese Military Units, on the other hand, done in Geneva on 20 July 1954). Done at Geneva on 21 July 1954, The Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was enacted for the referendum which is why the government of Vietnam didn't enforce this Article during the Paris Peace Accords was solemnly signed by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam- therefore, the plaintiff would like to request the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that should carry out this Article to be ongoing. By Bright Quang

[alciefromwonderland]

Honestly

Having cooking equipment that you're comfortable with makes such a difference

I just made a meal in an instant pot that I initially found instructions for involving the stove and like

Sure, I could have made it on the stove

But the instant pot doesn't stress me out nearly as bad

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

my take is that pericles' gender is 'somebody should have sat you down with the discworld witches books as a kid'

[lottieratworld]

personal nitpick completely unrelated to the winrar vulnerability itself, but.

the way this person wrote this pisses me off (probably more than it should), theres hundreds of reasons why a developer wouldnt want to implement self-updating in software, especially since implementing connecting to the internet to auto-install updates could open it up to even more potential security holes, plus it just sucks to develop. my web browser of choice, librewolf (a fork of firefox,) excludes self-updating and requires manual updates (or updates from a package manager) for these sorts of reasons. put your big boy pants on and manually download updates from developers websites and shut up

anyway. regarding winrar specifically just use 7zip instead, its free and open source, back when i used windows it served me well.

it does use unrar code to support decompressing rar archives but from what ive read the vulnerability in winrar shouldnt affect 7zip or any other programs using unrar, only winrar itself

[emptyheadgamer]