How much does my flight sponsor Vladimir?

 I regularly fly between Belgium and my second home country Latvia. How much am I sponsoring Vladimir when doing that? About 25€. Back of the envelope calculation.

• CRL - RIX return = 330 kg CO2 (source)
  
• 1 l jet fuel a1 = 2.52 kg CO2 (source)
• 1 l jet fuel = 0.85€ (source, some currency and SI conversion required)
• refinery and distribution margin ~ 15% (conservative ballpark guesstimate based upon price/barrel for crude and jet a1 fuel)
• percentage of Russian crude in EU: 27% (source)
• (330/2.52)*.85*.85*.27 = 25.55€

P.S. More source countries have "interesting" policies. For example. 8% of EU imports are from Saudi Arabia.

P.P.S. Our upcoming holiday will be by night train. Exciting!

Even the International Monetary Fund is now aware of the economic risks big tech poses. Somewhat.

https://blogs.imf.org/2021/03/15/rising-market-power-a-threat-to-the-recovery/

Less smart electric front door key turning lock?

Hello interwebz!

I am looking for a non-invasive front door key turning lock addon like https://nuki.io without too much brain. I'd rather run the brain myself in a way I can trust.

 The invasive version that requires changing the lock is easy to find. The non-invasive one, not so much...

Any hints?

Google Summer of Code: play with embedded and FPGAs at TimVideos!

Are you a Uni student and interested in hardware, FPGAs or embedded programming? You could get paid to hack by applying to the TimVideos.us organisation for Google Summer of Code!

The TimVideos.us project is participating in Google Summer of Code 2017 (GSoC2017) and is looking for students to hack on the hardware used to record many open source conferences - including;

Linux.conf.au	many PyCons around the world,	and DebConf.
LCA2017	PyCon AU, pyOhio, Kiwi PyCon & PyCon ZA	DebConf2016

Due to the focus on hardware, they are very interested in students who are interested in things like FPGAs, VHDL/Verilog and other HDLs, embedded C programming and operating systems and electronic circuit/PCB design.

More details: https://hdmi2usb.tv/gsoc/fpga/hardware/python/linux/2017/03/15/gsoc-announcement !

(Mostly sharing this because this open video hardware might fit FOSDEM very well in the future...)

ansible deploying video boxes

 
This was how an ansible deploy of the https://fosdem.org video boxes looked like... More info to come.

Ugly!

A dirty one liner as a small reminder for myself. Oh well, it did help my client to get those images out of this rotten old CMS quickly. And it wasn't as dirty as what people in #bash suggested. Dirty? Not dirty at all!

find ./ -iname "*image_large" -print0 | xargs -0 bash -c 'for image; do mv "$image" "$(dirname "$(dirname "$image")")"/$RANDOM.jpg; done' bash

NO to ACTA (thank you Poland!)

The Polish are angry about ACTA. Rightly so, just like the rest of the world should have been. Thank you Poland! And let's hope your protest actually makes some difference.

NPR on software patents

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack

or more ...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

Bath reprap master class: wonderful experience!

We built a reprap 3d printer last weekend at the Bath reprap master class. I really enjoyed myself, and I think I can speak for Rodrigo, Sabine and say the same holds true for them.

Wonderfully smart and friendly people. Enthousiasm. An entirely new set of skills. Felt much like my earliest days with free software.

Thank you Jean-Marc, Andrew, Kliment, Adrian, Joseph, Ruben, Rhys, Pia and others for organising this. I've rarely seen such enthousiastic and knowledgeable mentors before.

Thank you Keith, Peter, Vince, Phil and others for the use of your tools, the hints and the friendly company.

Nucléaire plus qu'hier. Et bien moins que demain.

Ran Prieur: Geeks and nuclear

André Bialek: La petite centrale

Een kerncentrale is niet te verzekeren

Andy Wingo: Nukular

Business idea: train delay compensation firm

I've had more than my share of train delays the last few months. As such, I'm entitled to some compensation (money to be spent on free tickets) by NMBS, the national passenger rail company. But there's a catch...

The time spent claiming train delay compensation far outweighs the actual benefit. This means only a tiny group of customers will actually claim the compensation: idealists hoping to improve punctuality this way, people with too much time on their hands, and maybe some extremely cash strapped people.

An tiny company that helps commuters claim their compensation might solve that problem. Commuters could get some compensation without the hassle of submitting a request. Employers put at least a tiny bit of pressure on the railway company to improve punctuality.

Surely initiatives like that must exist, somewhere on this planet. If you know about one of them, please share that information!

U.S. to Host World Pres Freedom Day 2011

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm

Gnash funding drive

Is a free Flash implementation important to you?
Remember that warm feeling when doing a Good Thing™?

Petter Reinholdtsen is raising funds for Gnash. Do the Good Thing™. Join him in his effort.

Ecolo switching to Ubuntu

Ecolo is switching to Ubuntu desktops. (They are the French speaking green party of Belgium, with 12.3% and 14.3% of French speaking votes for senate and chamber of representatives respectively). Respect!

"La cité du mâle" and self censhorship

La cité du mâle (EN) is a documentary on the position of women in those "hot" quarters of major French cities mostly inhabited by people of North African descent. It was coproduced by Arte, a French-German TV channel with a reputation to uphold. Think NPR, not Fox.

Arte has scrapped "La cité du mâle" from its broadcast schedule for now, "to protect participants who feel threatened".

Confessio Goliae, Modo Antiquo

Independent minds always find a way to express themselves. In twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe, there were the Goliards.

The "Confessio Goliae" is a famous secular poem from this age, by an anonymous Goliard, the Archipoeta. Cleverly shaped as a fake confession, it's a playful and sharp-tongued masterpiece. Only recently have musicologists succeeded at reconstructing the melody it was sung to.

I was impressed today by the Italian ensemble Modo Antiquo performing the Confessio Goliae at the Alden Biesen ancient music festival.

Diaspora

Fascinating things are starting to happen where online social networking and free software meet.

Luis Villa is asking the right questions, and getting answers.

Flemish software developer or free software user? Marianne Thyssen = BAD pick

Please take the following into consideration when voting for your EU member of parliament:

One of the few members of the EU parliament active PRO software patents, so AGAINST your interests was Marianne Thyssen (CD&V).

At the time, Bart Staes (Groen!), Dirk Sterckx(OpenVLD), Sp.a and NVA díd do a good job. Merde, even Vlaams Belang (friends know how hard this is for me to acknowledge) has supported Flemish SMEs on this issue.

The sources of this information? Direct experience talking to members of the EU parliament, and first hand reporting by friends even closer to the case.

Dear movie industry,

I would like to have a copy of the 1993 Russian movie "Okno v Parizh", also known as "Window to Paris" or "Salades Russes". I am willing to pay for this privilege.

I did some research. It seems there's only been a region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, ...) DVD release on 2005/10/20, EAN 9398710510690, by Hopscotch Films, with no stock available anymore by now.

Any hints? Or should I go look for a Russian sites where I can download a free copy?

Sincerely,

Mark Van den Borre
potential customer

UPDATE: If you are looking for this movie, and you know enough Russian (I don't), http://www.intv.ru/uplay/N8h5n7TnB might be of interest to you.