Benjamin Geer
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benjamingeer.piaille.fr.ap.brid.gy
Benjamin Geer
@benjamingeer.piaille.fr.ap.brid.gy
Software developer and ex-academic (sociology, conceptual history, Arabic culture, etc.), sometimes publishes classical sheet music, lives in Paris […]

[bridged from https://piaille.fr/@benjamingeer on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
'Record numbers of Swedish retirees are enrolling in a university run “by pensioners for pensioners”.... ‘Keeps your mind alert’: older Swedes reap the benefits of learning for pleasure' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/26/older-swedes-reap-benefits-late-life-education
#universities […]
Original post on social.coop
social.coop
December 26, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
172 800 captures d'écran quotidiennes : l'accusation explosive contre les smart TV #samsung, #LG, ou #sony
https://www.lesnumeriques.com/tv-televiseur/172-800-captures-d-ecran-quotidiennes-l-accusation-explosive-contre-les-smart-tv-samsung-lg-ou-sony-n248464.html

"Le mécanisme décrit ds ls […]
Original post on piaille.fr
piaille.fr
December 20, 2025 at 9:57 AM
RE: https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/115768423791708472

“Industry appears to regard Azure and Microsoft as if they are water companies or electricity providers. As if the cloud comes from highly regulated utilities which will always be there. But this is not the case of course.”
eupolicy.social
December 23, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Another benefit of #OpenPeerReview:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001221

When they know their reports will be made public, referees make them longer, clearer, more informative, and more constructive in suggesting improvements. And btw, reports by women are better […]
Original post on fediscience.org
fediscience.org
December 19, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Suddenly reminded of an e-waste story: about 13 years ago I spotted a high end gaming PC at the tip. Less than two years old, pretty expensive component choices for the era.

Took home, powered up. The CPU fan immediately ran 100%, and it froze mid-boot. OK, we know why it was treated as e-waste […]
Original post on aus.social
aus.social
December 21, 2025 at 4:15 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
December 19, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Due to a windstorm-related utility power outage at the NIST, time may soon be destroyed
December 20, 2025 at 7:46 AM
Le cinéma parisien La Clef, qui allait fermer, a été racheté par des bénévoles et annonce sa réouverture https://laclefrevival.org/ #cinéma #paris
- La Clef Revival
laclefrevival.org
December 20, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Les médias appartenant aux milliardaires répètent qu'il ne faut surtout pas taxer le patrimoine professionnel, argument pour rejeter la taxe Zucman.

La réalité : le patrimoine professionnel est intégralement détenu par les 10% les + riches, 68% appartenant même aux 1% les + riches !

#TaxTheRich
December 19, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
The French city of Lyon is dropping #Microsoft software in favor of #opensource alternatives. It doesn't want to depend on proprietary, closed-source software, and it doesn't want to depend on *American* software. It doesn't want "potential [US] governmental surveillance." […]
Original post on fediscience.org
fediscience.org
July 5, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Denmark Begins its Exit from Microsoft — and This is Just the Beginning
https://itsfoss.com/news/denmark-road-traffic-authority-ditches-microsoft/
The move is part of a government-wide effort to reduce dependency on Microsoft software. The traffic department's move is just the beginning.
Denmark Begins its Exit from Microsoft — and This is Just the Beginning
The move is part of a government-wide effort to reduce dependency on Microsoft software. The traffic department's move is just the beginning.
itsfoss.com
December 18, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Before switching your business to #ai, better read this very entertaining article by Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-claude-ai-vending-machine-agent-b7e84e34?st=UmzasA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
#giftarticle
#artificialintelligence #ki […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 18, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
I think @atuin is brilliant because it takes some data that people just have lying around already but was a pain to use (shell command history), puts it in a database, and makes it easy to find useful things in it, thus saving time and effort. (Thanks @ellie!)

What other data do we have lying […]
Original post on piaille.fr
piaille.fr
December 17, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
New from FM: Home Secretary ordered to allow man to return to UK after telling airline not to fly him and cancelling his eVisa | Sonia Lenegan
Home Secretary ordered to allow man to return to UK after telling airline not to fly him and cancelling his eVisa - Free Movement
This is one of those real train wrecks from the Home Office, where you may want to make yourself a large cup of coffee and read through the whole judgment. It
freemovement.org.uk
December 18, 2025 at 9:31 AM
December 17, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Somebody just found out that the source code of @langscipress books is available on the page of the books and thanked me enthusiastically.

So, in case you do not know this yet. The source code of ALL our 308 books is available on github and linked from within the books and from the langsci book […]
Original post on lingo.lol
lingo.lol
December 17, 2025 at 6:24 PM
I think @atuin is brilliant because it takes some data that people just have lying around already but was a pain to use (shell command history), puts it in a database, and makes it easy to find useful things in it, thus saving time and effort. (Thanks @ellie!)

What other data do we have lying […]
Original post on piaille.fr
piaille.fr
December 17, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
For whatever reason, Github banned my IP for one hour and I need to see what my students have been doing.

They must contribute to the opensource project of their choice and 99% of them end up on Github

And, yes, I have a Github account even if I would like to get rid of it. But I can’t grade […]
Original post on mamot.fr
mamot.fr
December 17, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
A true profile in courage to follow one’s conscience, especially in that system. Also amazing that the footage has surfaced.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/world/asia/china-general-tiananmen-square.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9U8.GVSL.w88SAZiFyAxM&smid=nytcore-ios-share
December 17, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Geer
Five years ago I started getting these emails about #curl from NASA. Months later we learned this probably was related to them using curl in the Mars Helicopter mission.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/12/17/curl-supports-nasa/
curl supports NASA
Not everyone understands how open source is made. I received the following email from NASA a while ago. ## Subject: Curl Country of Origin and NDAA Compliance > Hello, my name is [deleted] and I am a Supply Chain Risk Management Analyst at NASA. As such, I ensure that all NASA acquisitions of Covered Articles comply with Section 208 of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, Public Law 116-94, enacted December 20, 2019. To do so, the Country of Origin (CoO) information must be obtained from the company that develops, produces, manufactures, or assembles the product(s). To do so, please provide an email response or a formal document (a PDF on company letterhead is preferred, but a simple statement is sufficient) specifically identifying the country, or countries, in which Curl **is developed and maintained** > If the country of origin is outside the United States, please provide any information you may have stating that testing is performed in the United States prior to supplying products to customers. Additionally, if available, please identify all authorized resellers of the product in question. > Lastly, please confirm that Curl **is not developed by, contain components developed by** , or receive substantial influence from entities prohibited by Section 889 of the 2019 NDAA. These entities include the following companies and any of their subsidiaries or affiliates: > Hytera Communications Corporation > Huawei Technologies Company > ZTE Corporation > Dahua Technology Company > Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company > > Finally, we have a time frame of 5 days for a response. > Thank you, ## My answer Okay, I first considered going with strong sarcasm in my reply due to the complete lack of understanding, and the implied threat in that last line. What would happen if I wouldn’t respond in time? Then it struck me that this could be my chance to once and for all get a confirmation if curl is already actually used in space or not. So I went with informative and a friendly tone. > Hi [name], > > I will answer to these questions below to the best of my ability, and maybe you can answer something for me? > curl (https://curl.se) is an open source project that creates two products, curl the command line tool and libcurl the library. I am the founder, lead developer and core maintainer of the project. To this date, I have done about 57% of the 26,000 changes in the source code repository. The remaining 43% have been done by 841 different volunteers and contributors from all over the world. Their names can be extracted from our git repository: https://github.com/curl/curl > You can also see that I own most, but not all, copyrights in the project. > I am a citizen of Sweden and I’ve been a citizen of Sweden during the entire time I’ve done all and any work on curl. The remaining 841 co-authors are from all over the world, but primarily from western European countries and the US. You could probably say that we live primarily “on the Internet” and not in any particular country. > We don’t have resellers. I work for an American company (wolfSSL) where we do curl support for customers world-wide. > Our testing is done universally and is not bound to any specific country or region. We test our code substantially before release. > Me knowingly, we do not have any components or code authored by people at any of the mentioned companies. > So finally my question: can you tell me anything about where or for what you use curl? Is it used in anything in space? > Regards, > Daniel ## Used in space? Of course my attempt was completely in vain and the answer back was very brief and it just said… ##### “We are using curl to support NASA’s mission and vision.” ## Credits Space ship image by Elias Sch. from Pixabay
daniel.haxx.se
December 17, 2025 at 8:18 AM