Blocking messages from online abusers -- and even changing your
identity to get away from them -- may work fine against someone on the
other side of the world. But what if the abuser is your close partner?
<https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/apps-cant-stop-exes-who-use-technology…>:
When you learn that your privacy has been compromised, the common
advice is to prevent additional access—delete your insecure
account, open a new one, change your password. But in abusive
romantic relationships, disconnection can be extremely fraught. For
one, it can put the victim at risk of physical harm: If abusers
expect digital access and that access is suddenly closed off, it
can lead them to become more violent or intrusive in other ways. It
may seem cathartic to delete abusive material, like alarming text
messages—but if you don’t preserve that kind of evidence, it can
make prosecution more difficult. And closing some kinds of
accounts, like social networks, to hide from a determined abuser
can cut off social support that survivors desperately need.
(Found from
<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/intimate_partne.html>)
Nice roundup
<http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/2018-in-perspective> from
Alexandre Prokoudine on where a bunch of Free graphics/audio/video
projects have gone and where they are likely to go over the coming year.
Gimp 2.10 continues to be delayed, but in return the list of goodies
promised continues to lengthen:
The team initially intended v2.10 to be more or less a GEGL-based
upgrade of v2.8 plus high bit depth precision support. Needless to
say, the plan hasn't exactly worked: there will be a lot more than
that.
In fact, even now, when only critical bugs are supposed to be
worked on, the team cannot resist making improvements that aren't
blocking the release.
Another interesting one is an initiative in Germany to come up with a
nonproprietary alternative to common colour specifications like Pantone:
In December 2017, FreieFarbe e.V. announced that their initiative
for „Open Colour Communication“ standard was supported by DIN and
will become a DIN SPEC (which is the first step towards DIN Norm).
It is claimed that DIN intends to turn this into an international
standard via ISO later.
The FreieFarbe / FreeColour initiative aims to provide an open
alternative to Pantone, HKS, and other proprietary colour systems.
They argue that unlike Pantone and some other proprietary
manufacturers like RAL, FreiFarbe has an actual color system.
On the music-production front, Zyn-Fusion seems to be developing as the
successor to the venerable ZynAddSubFX, while VCV Rack is the candidate
for the ultimate software modular synth, complete with rat’s nest of
(virtual) connecting wires. (I’ve seen a demo or two on YouTube.)
