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In the next few weeks, I will be speaking on two very different topics. The first on September 13, hosted by the Melbourne Agnostics Society, will be on "Stoicism, Taoism and Apathy", where I'll be wearing my hat as the University Outreach Officer for the International Society for Philosophers (yes, there is such a thing). I promise that the presentation may be quite different from what one might assume from the title! I am not giving too much away, however, in previewing that there is a great deal of similarity in what could be called the psychological versions of Stoicism and Taoism, although even this touches upon a common physics and even metaphysics that correlates with the two: the Logos and the Dao.

The second presentation is part of the "New Zealand Research Software Engineering Conference" on September 23-24. Despite my deep wish to have another excuse to return to the home country, this conference is being held entirely online. My presentation, with the truly riveting title "Programming Principles in a High Performance Computing Environment", will provide both an overview of the current postgraduate cohort's programming experience, their needs, and the relevant training courses that I conduct at the University of Melbourne, especially in relation to high performance and parallel code. It will dovetail quite well with recent workshops that I conducted last week on "Regular Expressions with Linux" and "GPGPU Programming", along with near-future workshops on "Mathematical Applications and Programming" and the ever-popular "High Performance and Parallel Python".

Finally, on a related note, many would have seen from photos on Facebook that I am giving away a number of academic and general books, spanning my rather diverse interests; about five hundread in total and a shared Google Drive folder has been created for those who wish to peruse, with more (especially from business studies and computer science) forthcoming. I suspect after this, the next giveaway will be from my fiction books and then from my rather vast music collection. All of this is in aid of finding happy homes for various useful things that I don't have a strong emotional attachment to, creating more space within my abode, and, ultimately, thinking of where I will live for the next chapter in my life. But that is in a couple of years at least; nobody has ever accused me of acting with only short-term in mind.
Sep. 1st, 2025 02:01 pm

Culture and Multiculturalism

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[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.
Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm

Code deploy happening shortly

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.

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[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.

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