Serious Midday Break
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A serious subject sometimes has little to do with computers.
Some turn up in Chromium updates.
A take on Black Lives Matter turned up in a software update: “Update to 83.0.4103.116. Fixes CVE-2020-6509.
“Black Lives Matter. Saying this does not mean that other lives do not matter. It should not be controversial to say this. If I say Chromium updates matter, it does not mean that other Fedora packages do not matter, it means that a Chromium update is needed to fix this giant pile of severe security vulnerabilities, here, today, now:
“CVE-2020-6463 CVE-2020-6465 CVE-2020-6466 CVE-2020-6467 CVE-2020-6468 CVE-2020-6469 CVE-2020-6470 CVE-2020-6471 CVE-2020-6472 CVE-2020-6473 CVE-2020-6474 CVE-2020-6475 CVE-2020-6476 CVE-2020-6478 CVE-2020-6479 CVE-2020-6480 CVE-2020-6481 CVE-2020-6482 CVE-2020-6483 CVE-2020-6484 CVE-2020-6485 CVE-2020-6486 CVE-2020-6487 CVE-2020-6488 CVE-2020-6489 CVE-2020-6490 CVE-2020-6491 CVE-2020-6505 CVE-2020-6506 CVE-2020-6507 In making that analogy, I do not intend to trivialize BLM. In no way do I mean to compare the lives of people to a silly web browser update. People are infinitely important than software. But since I'm here to push this software update out, I am also choosing to say clearly and unambiguously that Black Lives Matter. Open Source proves that many voices, many contributions, together can change the world. It depends on it. This is my voice.”
“In making that analogy, I do not intend to trivialize BLM. In no way do I mean to compare the lives of people to a silly web browser update. People are infinitely important than software. But since I'm here to push this software update out, I am also choosing to say clearly and unambiguously that Black Lives Matter.
“Open Source proves that many voices, many contributions, together can change the world. It depends on it. This is my voice.”
Bats are mentioned in Fedora 33 : chromium (2020-4e8e48da22):
“3. Without bats acting as pollinators, agave and cacao plants would struggle. That means that bats are responsible for tequila and chocolate.”
I usually don’t come across these texts, because I generally update without afterwards checking exactly why something got updated. So these may not be the best texts of the type, just those I saw by accident.
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A clerk behind a window for a big company did paperwork for hours on end. I would deliver some and get his signature on a ticket, so we could bill for the delivery. The ticket was computer-printed on a tractor-feed form, so it had left and right edges with lots of holes for the tractor feed. The clerk would tear off one of the two edges. I didn’t ask him to do that and I didn’t care one way or the other, but it was curious that he always tore the same edge off and not the other one. I asked him if he liked to tear it off. He said yes. I let him do it to his heart’s content.
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Sometimes there’s irony in a foreign nation using U.S. services on the Internet.
— The nation of Georgia, near Russia, some years ago was under military cyberattack from Russia. So, Georgia put an important military website on Google, because Google could protect it from Russia better than the Georgian nation could.
— The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, i.e., North Korea, has a couple of universities. One of them invites contact through its Gmail account. That’s not on a North Korean domain. It’s at Gmail.com. You can see this at http://www.ryongnamsan.edu.kp/univ/switchlang?lang=en (as accessed April 8, 2021).
