literature.cafe

Great philosophical and existential literature.

The EU has implemented a free public wi-fi infrastructure and is pitching this service to various public buildings, including public libraries. This “Wifi4EU” project is limited to people with smartphones, and only those that are running iOS or Android OS. The app needed to connect to the network is closed-source and exclusively available in the walled gardens of Google and Apple. The network is inaccessible without the special app.

AFAICT, these are the excluded demographics of people:

• people with laptops
• people who do not have or carry a smartphone
• people with old non-updatable smartphones (all iOS & AOS devices are designed for obsolescence)
• people with cheap Chinese phones that exclude Google Playstore (which requires licensing with Google that some vendors do not subscribe to)
• people with deGoogled phones
• people with no Google account (i.e. those without the mobile phone number needed to register with Google)
• people who refuse to install and execute non-free closed-source software, and those on FOSS platforms that do not support such software

My concern is that when a public library decides to deploy Wifi4EU, they will discontinue their current wi-fi service, which does not require a special app and which is generally open to more demographics of people. Note that it’s a bit of a shit-show already because some current library wi-fi services already exclude people who cannot overcome the shitty captive portal + SMS verification design. Wifi4EU is even more exclusive.

Archive.is link for those who need it.

Ouch.

Ouch.

I hadn't given any thought to the subject or a long time, being overtaken by other news stories but I randomly watched Zero Dark Thirty (not knowing what it was about) and found the story about hunting a public enemy that didnt want to be found intriguing enough to find out more.

Not really something I would normally read, but I found it a good general purpose account that provided a decent amount of context around and leading up to the event without being bogged down in detail.

One of the greatest stories I've ever read. If you love a psychoanalytical story or supernatural fiction, give it a go!

I have been listening to more books than I have been reading these days and I want to be able to add them properly on my book tracker.

Is there some unique identifier for an audiobook? I guess the ISBN of the book will tell me the exact words of the edition but the same words with another cover have a different ISBN and the same ISBN is used for to different narrator.

What do you know about this topic? Thank you in advance.