wychwood: Kosh has moments of revelation (B5 - moments of revelation)
[personal profile] wychwood
I am on a real reading tear at the moment, and my bedside book pile is down to five! Naturally I then celebrated this by buying another six or seven cheap ebooks, because I delight in causing my own suffering. I'm hoping to finish another couple of the bedside books soon and then do a poll so you all can decide which bits of the epic to-read shelf I should use to rebuild it with.

A proper gaming post is in the works, but I have been delighted by the recent changes which mean that all Steam games now work on Linux - I haven't tested it extensively, but I've already played several previously-Windows-only games with no issues at all. Aside from work that was the main thing causing me to spend time in Windows, so suddenly I'm spending a lot more time logged into Linux, which means I'm getting to more of the tasks I do there! Including writing up my booklog, although at the rate I'm reading it's going to be a while before that's ready to post, and I've already finished six books in September...

Miss H and I are going to see Florence + The Machine in February, which was extortionately expensive but I'm still looking forward to it! This is why I don't believe people who say that classical audiences are low because tickets are too expensive, because you can get into most CBSO concerts for under £30 and the cheapest Florence tickets were £45 plus fees for standing room only. Which is not to say that £30 isn't a lot of money, but if pop artists can sell out in ten minutes for an average price over £100 then I just don't believe that price point is the major issue.

It's really funny how the last couple of weeks are suddenly waving AUTUMN IS COMING signs. We've had more rain this week than in about the previous month, and while it's still warm, I'm becoming increasingly aware that the sheet I sleep under is going to need to be switched for the duvet in the near future, and that there is a limited time for shirt-sleeves at home. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to being able to wear my jacket again. I used the hot water bottle on Tuesday night, but it's not back into the regular rotation quite yet...

at least i'm up to date on laundry

Sep. 1st, 2025 06:05 pm
wychwood: Teyla wonders if you meant to do that (SGA - Teyla mean that)
[personal profile] wychwood
Back to work was a slog today! That was my last day off until Christmas, and September is looking like being pretty intense as a month. The "be on campus for a week to act as a reserve for visa checks" has morphed into "three and a half days of being a reserve plus two full days of actual checking" (yes, this does add up to more days than exist in the work week; I have refrained from accepting the relevant calendar invites until someone can clarify quite how they expect me to staff two desks at the same time). I've also been voluntold to attend a full-day meeting on campus the previous week, which is not only on a work from home day but also a day with choir in the evening (not to mention choir the office day before it and choir the work from home day after it). I am trying very hard not to think about the number of things which I really ought to be getting completed before the start of term, because my odds are looking extremely poor.

On the other hand, I did get through the 300 system emails, 84 personal emails, and 31 Teams notifications which were waiting this morning, and only have a dozen or so new actions to pick up from them. And I did the first round of monthly reports, including desperately scraping my brain to extract suggestions as to what I did during August (not very much, apparently!!). I left the intimidating email from Legal for tomorrow morning, and then have ambitious plans to make a proper list of what I want to get done this month and try and make some progress on... well, anything. Something. A Task of some kind. Perhaps if I can manage that I will feel less like the human incarnation of the scream emoji.

Culture and Multiculturalism

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:01 pm
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
In recent days, my numerous activities have been interspersed with a few cultural events worthy of mentioning. The first was a special nineteen-part concert, "Songs of Peace and Remembrance: 80 Years On" at the Melbourne Recital Centre from the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, which was nothing short of phenomenal; the erhu solo, "Soul of the Snowy Mountain" was especially captivating. As part of a national tour, the concert was built on the theme of Chinese resistance to the invasion from the Empire of Japan, and the end of the world anti-fascist war. At the reception before the concert, the former President of the Legislative Council, Bruce Atkinson, made the insightful point that the Second World War really started in 1931, with the invasion of Manchuria.

The second event was attending the Conquest Market Day at the ever-beautiful Coburg Town Hall, staffing the RPG Review Cooperative stall's fine collection of second-hand RPG systems from members. I am very thankful for the assistance provided by Andrew D., in delivering the goods, the stunning generosity of Rade V., in providing me a copy of the "Arkham Horror RPG: Hungering Abyss", and the ever delightful opportunity to spend time in the company of Liz B., and Karl B., and, of course, the many people who visited the staff, rummaged, reminisced and explored through our often curious stock. On a related note, this Wednesday I'll be starting up a new RPG story using the ElfQuest RPG and setting, from the comics (running since 1978!) by Wendy and Richard Pini.

The third event was the University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performance at Hamer Hall, of "Four Sea Interludes" by Benjamin Britten, Debussy's "La Mer", and finally, Modest Mussorgsky', "Pictures at an Exhibition", which was the main feature of the performance unsurprising as it correlates with a superb narrative, where the movements are quite independent but flow in sequence in a manner that seems perfectly natural. Following both romantic and impressionist styles, with British, French, and Russian thematic content, the performance was provided with a great sense of competence and creativity. The cultural diversity of the orchestra and the vast audience juxtaposed quite strikingly with a handful of boorish anti-immigration protesters who threatened an attendee just before the concert started.

On that note, significant discussion has been made of the "March for Australia" anti-immigration protests that were held over the weekend. Nominally, they argue that migration in a time of housing costs and unemployment is a problem. Factually, the protests are incorrect - net migration (the metric that really matters) is quite low compared to the 20-year average, but of course facts are quite irrelevant to the violent "white nationalists" who are organising these events. Given that more than 97% of Australians come from a migrant background (and needless to say, they don't like indigenous Australians either), it should be clear that we are enriched culturally and economically by our diverse migrant populations, and we have become more capable of a moral universalism as well. The overwhelming majority understands and embraces our diversity, but we must be aware that extremists are in our country, and they are organised, and therefore, we need to be organised against them.

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

july booklog

Aug. 31st, 2025 12:32 pm
wychwood: Sinclair in the light (B5 - Sinclair light)
[personal profile] wychwood
63. Our Precious Lulu - Anne Fine ) This isn't what I would normally call id fic, but there's something of that visceral satisfaction in it; "person with rubbish family wins in the end".


64. The Gabriel Hounds - Mary Stewart ) Not perhaps one of the top Stewarts, but even middling Stewart is pretty good.


65. Enchanted Glass - Diana Wynne Jones ) Even a whole bunch of really annoying elements can't take the pleasure out of this book, but it's not one of her top hits.


66. The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien ) The triumphant conclusion, followed by lots of realisations about what happens after the triumph and how much harder it gets, and then a whole bunch of appendices, which I enjoyed more than I expected! This is a cracking book, though, even as I develop more complicated feelings about it over time.


67. Stone and Sky - Ben Aaronovitch ) Another fun volume; I'm interested in seeing where Aaronovitch is going to take things from here.


68. The Islands of Chaldea - Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones ) DWJ is basically never less than entertaining, but this doesn't manage much more than that.


69. The Adventure of the Demonic Ox - Lois McMaster Bujold ) I feel like I'm saying this a lot this time, but: this is fine! I enjoyed it! Wasn't much more than that!


70. Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy - Sam J Miller ) Fine but I'm not sure I'd read Miller again.


71. Behind Frenemy Lines - Zen Cho ) Deeply delightful; I do prefer SFF to romance, but Cho's romances are so fun I don't mind!
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Darwin Festival 2025

Aug. 24th, 2025 09:00 pm
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
Darwin is not exactly known for being the cultural centre of Australia, but it does its best during its Festival and Fringe Festival. It's a particularly good time to visit in the dry season, where every day is 30 degrees, blue skies and a cool morning breeze, especially as a break from Melbourne's wintery touch (which I also love). The past several days have been in the fine company of Lara and Adam at MrBlueSky, where I also had the delight of catching up with Gary, Mon, Jac, and Shu on different occasions, and every evening there was an opportunity to soak up some fine entertainment.

A personal highlight was "John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew" performing the songs of Redgum. It's not my usual style of music, but they are the most notable radical Australian folk band that has ever walked in the country, and the musicianship was utterly superb. I felt like a teenager getting John to sign my copy of "If You Don't Fight You Lose", but I justified it on the grounds that I have been listening to this album since my teenage years; this will be a Rocknerd review. Another event also worthy of special note was "Duck Pond", a fusion of acrobatics, ballet, and theatre and a fusion story of Swan Lake and The Ugly Duckling. Understandably, I couldn't help but think of the RuneQuest scenario of the same name. Further, there is the excellent musicianship and storytelling of Fred Leone, whose self-taught upside-down southpaw guitar-playing is just a small testimony to his abilities.

Other events included a visit to the Northern Territory Art Gallery and Museum (MAGNT) which was hosting the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA), the video artistry of Shundori", the impressive and moving Zhangke Jia film Caught by the Tides, and the impressive aerialist performance of "La Ronde". In contrast, I was less taken by Bangarra Dance Theatre's "Illume", mainly because it didn't provide what was said on the tin, or the Sydney alternative-improv "Party Dozen", although kudos to the young punk local support act "Tang" who had plenty of energy and style.

The time seemed to go quickly, and the view of the Darwin harbour from my co-owned apartment always gives the opportunity for reflection, consolidation of thoughts, and quiet strategic preparation for the future. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest places for a short visit, and I can certainly understand why some people feel the desire to move on a more permanent basis, although I am a long way from such considerations myself. I will, once again, take this opportunity to thank Lara and Adam for their absolutely superb hosting and care of this Southerner's visit and for showing me many highlights of their home town. Doubtless, I will return again soon.

Reading not-Wednesday 23/8

Aug. 23rd, 2025 03:24 pm
liv: Bookshelf labelled: Caution. Hungry bookworm (bookies)
[personal profile] liv
One advantage of my unexpected free month was that I started reading books again. Not a lot but 6 complete novels and a longfic in 6 weeks, which is more than I have for years. Let me catch up with some brief reviews:

Since term properly, properly finished on 6 July, I have read:

  • Circe by Madeline Miller 2018, Pub 2018 Bloomsbury, ISBN 9781526612519
  • Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (c) Nikesh Shukla 2010, Pub 2010 Quartet, ISBN 978-0-7043-7204-7
  • Will Super Villains be on the final? by Naomi Novik, illustrated by Yishan Li (c) Temeraire LLC 2011, Pub 2011 Del Rey, ISBN 978-0-345-51656-5
  • Some desperate glory by Emily Tesh (c) Emily Tesh 2023, Pub 2023 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-51718-6
  • Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (c) Ann Leckie 2015, Pub 2015 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7
  • A free man of color by Barbara Hambly (c) Barbara Hambly 1997, Pub 1998 Bantam, ISBN 0-553-57526-0
  • I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! by Lanna Michaels, 2025


Circe )

Coconut Unlimited )

Will Super Villains be on the final? )

Some desperate glory )

Ancillary Mercy )

A Free Man of Color )

I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! )
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