***infosec specialists are needed in the resistance ***
The world needs tech security specialists to run workshops at public libraries for all ages & abilities to remove spyware, AI, reduce surveillance, understand the issues, & for more advanced, move to Linux, degooglefy, etc.
Libraries will pay good wages for these workshops. There may be grants. If you have these skills, please consider offering them.
My last post got more than 1k boosts! Thanks everyone! 👉 I decided to share one of my paid resources here on Mastodon for free so that everyone can have a look at my educational paper circuit projects and how my workshop kits look. Feel free to download and/or #retoot These color-changing mushrooms are a fun party trick for grown-ups or an easy educational project for kids aged 7 and up. And here is the super secret download link voltpaperscissors.com/secretdo…
get library cards and use them often (online e-book and audiobook rentals count!). sign up to volunteer at your local library. donate money to your library’s general fund. run for a spot on the library board.
join and participate in your local “friends of the library” group. donate books (if your library accepts book donations). set up your own little free library. vote for library funding when it’s on your local ballot.
As you will know I'm no stranger to typos, so this cartoon goes out to anyone who sent me a massage about a typo in a post (as always thanks for your help, much appreciated) bit also to my Mastodon friend @h4890 who will appreciate this on a Saturday morning.
Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations
"...court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models."
"In recent months the Harvard Law School [@harvard_law] Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil] has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. To begin, we have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal #Github repositories, and #PubMed...."
I know it's twee to romanticise libraries, but it will never not amaze me that we can ask for a book they don't have and a librarian in a local library on the far side of the country will walk over to pick it off a shelf and send it to a librarian in my local library who will walk over to put it on a shelf, reserved for me, just for me, for free.
Update. "[University] #libraries across the country, from Carnegie Mellon…to the U of California system, turned to what’s known as [#ControlledDigitalLending, #CDL] in 2020, which gave students a way to borrow books that weren’t otherwise available. Those programs are small in scale and largely experimental but part of a broader shift in modernizing the university library. But the appeals court ruling could upend those programs." insidehighered.com/news/tech-i…
"What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day."
Most notable to me: * The court ruled against controlled digital lending (#CDL), not just the short-lived and less-controlled National Emergency Library (#NEL). * The court found "market harm" to #publishers even tho pubs submitted no data on that harm. * The court recognized the right of conventional lending by print #libraries but (IMHO) waffled when trying to square its rationale with that right.
Background from IA: "We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of #libraries to own, lend, and preserve books." blog.archive.org/2024/09/04/in…
"The majority of ALL book bans in the US were initiated by just 11 people…Book banning is NOT a movement…In most [states] it only takes a single complaint to have a strip a book from the library. Just one…Look at what is happening in St. James, FL where ONE person got twenty three books removed. Or in Clay County District schools where ONE person forced almost thirty books off shelves." action.everylibrary.org/books_…
I just signed this petition and hope you will too.
I found some more traveling libraries! These are from the Finnish Seafarers' Union from the 1920s and are, I believe, to be brought aboard boats. From (yes I am at work today) Flickr Commons. #libraries #books #finland
Images of urbanisation, industrialisation and the emergence of consumer culture and the welfare state – the familiar 20th century story of the upheavals of Finnish society.
This time, however, the vantage point is that of the working class.
These two paragraphs from Wil Wheaton's latest blog post really sum up how I feel about #BannedBooks and #libraries. It’s a lengthy post, but really quite worth the time.
In order to survive, I disassociated for much of my childhood, but I clearly remember the books. That’s where I found comfort, companionship, inspiration and validation. It’s where the …
voltpaperscissors.com/secretdo…
