Wudi

A congresswoman posted this 😬 :

https://x.com/NancyMace/status/2069134072702795891

Note: I do not oppose all gun laws or gun licensing. I am in favor of the basic licensing scheme (with some modifications). I am not in favor of banning handguns (which have grandfathered by bill c-21 and the previous freeze in 2022) nor am I in favor of banning any firearm by model or action. As they are doing.

Actually, the law was surprisingly effective

About 30% of crime handguns used to come from Canadian stores. Some citizens with a valid possession and acquisition licence used to buy guns and sell them illegally :

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/man-facing-15-counts-of-firearms-trafficking-one-of-8-recently-charged-in-straw-buying-cases/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/guns-domestic-danforth-shooting-toronto-1.4759159

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alert-guns-investigations-weapons-drugs-straw-buyers-1.5145282

Now this source of handguns has practically disapeared.

They now exclusively come from the United States.

Mexico’s homicide rate is 13x higher than Vancouver’s

How can a board of directors justify this expense?

Because they are also getting lavishly paid.

I have been on 20 public company corporate boards, not counting any Berkshire subsidiaries. So, I’ve seen a lot of corporate boards operate. And the independent directors, in many cases, are the least independent

I mean, if the income you receive as a corporate director — which typically may be around $250,000 a year ”now, if that’s an important part of your income, and you hope that some other corporation calls the CEO and says, “How’s so-and-so as a director?” and the current CEO — your CEO ” says, “Oh, he’s fine and never raises any problems,” and then you get on another board at 250,000 and that’s an important part, how in the world is that independent? I mean, I really, just an observation

They’re just not going to upset the apple cart, because what they’re — and I’d probably behave the same way in the same position. I mean, if $250,000 a year is important to you, why in the hell would you behave in a way that’s going to cause your CEO to say to the next CEO, “This guy acts up a little bit too much. You really better get somebody else.” It’s the way it works

- Warren Buffet

(As of 2026, Buffet's estimated net worth stood at $145.9 billion)

This measure will not ban parking. It just means that it's now up to the market. Previously, home buyers were forced to pay for parking. Whether they wanted it or not. Even if they didn't have a car.

He is more entertaining than the football match 🤣

Jon Edwards is this guy

https://xcancel.com/edwards345/status/2065951464674172967

https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAE/people/alumni/distinguished/oae/2017/Jonathan-Edwards

Probably the biggest change of the Linux 7.1 kernel series is a new NTFS file system implementation, which has been in the works for the last 4 years, featuring full write support with delayed allocation, iomap, and folio integration to improve write performance, better stability, and a new suite of userspace utilities called ntfsprogs-plus.

Linux kernel 7.1 also introduces a new Landlock access right for pathname UNIX domain sockets, thanks to a new LSM hook, improvements to the amd-pstate and intel_idle drivers for better power management, and support for the exFAT file system to preallocate clusters without zeroing to reduce file fragmentation.

Among other changes, Linux kernel 7.1 enables Intel’s Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) feature by default, introduces CPU Memory (CMEM) Latency PMU support for NVIDIA Tegra410 SoCs, adds BPF fsession support for the IBM System/390 architecture, and adds seccomp() support to the Alpha architecture.

Also worth mentioning is that the ublk user-space block driver received a UBLK_F_SHMEM_ZC feature flag for zero-copy I/O, the CIFS client file system received support for the O_TMPFILE option to create temporary files, and the Ceph file system now has a complete infrastructure for per-subvolume I/O metrics collection and reporting to the MDS.

On top of that, Linux kernel 7.1 adds support for generating and verifying T10 protection information at the file system level, extends support for TCG Storage Opal SSC Single User Mode (SUM) in the sed-opal kernel interface, implements BPF support into the io_uring subsystem, and adds support for multiple tuning algorithms to the DAMON subsystem

I don't understand what any of this means, but this is good I guess

I'm asking this because I'm convinced this is actually happening.

Why do they have to report on Texas politics?

Shouldn't they report primarly on US States such as Maine, Washington, or Montana ?

Remember this?

Or this?

The chickens are coming home to roost

Microsoft has an entire team whose only goal is to prevent European governments from switching to Open Source. They distribute gifts to politicians.

Remember, this is exactly how Microsoft operates in the United States:

Twenty months ago, Representative Billy Tauzin walked into the office of William H. Gates 3rd, chairman of Microsoft, bearing a 10 inch by 10 inch white box and a warning.

Mr. Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of a subcommittee that oversees the telecommunications industry, placed the box on Mr. Gates's desk. Inside was a lemon meringue pie, a reminder of another pie that had been thrown in Mr. Gates's face several weeks earlier by a Microsoft critic. The message to Mr. Gates, the richest man on earth and the leader of the digital world, was blunt: You need to make friends in Washington.

Mr. Gates apparently took Mr. Tauzin's message to heart -- with a vengeance. While Microsoft and its executives contributed a relatively modest $60,000 to Republican Party committees in 1997, those contributions shot up to $470,000 as part of the company's overall political contribution of $1.3 million in 1998. The 1998 figure included donations to political candidates, with the bulk of the money going to Republicans. This year, the company's contributions of nearly $600,000 have been more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Mr. Gates and his top lieutenants have made dozens of trips to Washington, cultivating powerful figures in both parties and hiring some of the city's priciest lobbyists. Microsoft has retained Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee; Vic Fazio, a former Democratic congressman from California; Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota; Tom Downey, a former Democratic congressman from New York and a close friend of Vice President Al Gore; Mark Fabiani, former special counsel to the Clinton White House; and Kerry Knott, former chief of staff to Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader.

The company also poured millions of dollars into an aggressive public relations and political offensive, hiring an armada of well-connected lobbyists and underwriting the work of research groups, academics and consultants who have made arguments sympathetic to Microsoft's defense in the antitrust case.

Microsoft has hired as consultant-spokesmen two former heads of the Justice Department's antitrust division and a dozen or more prominent academics and writers, who publish articles and give interviews advocating Microsoft's position.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/07/us/us-versus-microsoft-the-strategy-how-microsoft-sought-friends-in-washington.html

Remember, Trump no longer prosecutes U.S. firms involved in bribery:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c391ml9x878o

Microsoft earns nearly $30 billion annually from Office.

$30 billion dollars are at stake. You think their marketing department doesn't bribe reviewers to harshly criticize LibreOffice?

The switch to Open Source isn't going to happen magically.

It's going to be a long and bitter battle.