Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Well, this is a transcendent level of evil: Facebook bought a VPN company and deployed it, in part, to spy on its users.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/

It's a reminder that VPNs have their own risks, beyond technical ones if operated incompetently -- namely, that you have to trust the VPN company itself.

🚨NEWS: The company that chartered the ship that destroyed the Key Bridge was just sanctioned by regulators for silencing whistleblowers raising safety concerns.

Maersk’s policy violated the law, according to federal documents reviewed by The Lever. https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/

So... I'm visiting the US. And can I just say one thing: FOX News is destroying this society, hastening demise of an empire already primed with broad-spectrum disaffection and staggering ignorance.

"From my part, I believe the very concept of exclusive intellectual property with respect to recorded music has come to a natural end, or something like an end. Technology has brought to a head a need to embrace the meaning of the word “release”, as in bird or fart. It is no longer possible to maintain control over digitised material and I don’t believe the public good is served by trying to."

#SteveAlbini, 2014

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-keynote-address-at-face-the-music-in-full

#IP #IntellectualProperty

A state rep got caught committing securities fraud. A grand jury indicted him on felony charges. Years passed. The defendant was elected attorney general. Years more passed.

Now he has agreed to accept punishment. He must pay nearly $300,000 in restitution, take legal ethics classes and perform 100 hours of community service.

And he remains attorney general.

Given these impossible facts—what state are we in?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/us/politics/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-texas-plea-deal-securities-fraud.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.fk0.8BHi.hUSHim_e5rvK&smid=url-share

US Politics in a nutshell:

The US forked British Monarchy™ in 1776, but froze the dev branch with Constitution 1.0, so didn't bother to backport any of the subsequent bugfixes and security patches (1831, 1918, 1938, etc.) from the main British branch.

Anyway, you've got a bunch of British Monarchy™ users who instinctively want to tug the forelock but don't have anyone to tug it *at* and it upsets them because homebrew is no good—it takes 700 years of inbreeding to roll your own nobility.

Coming Soon: "Selfhosted Infrastructure Any%", a speedrun-themed livestream demo of setting up some libre software tools using Co-op Cloud.

This Thursday 28 March 2024 @ 8:30pm (20:30) UTC https://time.is/compare/830PM_28_Mar_2024_in_UTC

–3wc

La la la. No this doesn't sound sketch.

Telegram is offering a new way to earn a premium subscription free of charge: all you have to do is volunteer your phone number to relay one-time passwords (OTP) to other users. This, in fact, sounds like an awful idea — particularly for a messaging service based around privacy.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24111818/telegram-peer-to-peer-login-otp-two-factor-volunteer

There is almost infinite hypocrisy in this letter to investors by the CEO of one of the most rapacious corporate giants on the planet.

His fundamental point -- that an aging population has almost no way of paying for longevity -- is true.

But the pious lecture from a financial engineer whose operation's holdings have plundered so much from so many to enrich so few is sickening.

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-annual-chairmans-letter

We slightly adjusted filters for our explore view recently, and feedback was positive so far.

Explore projects on #Codeberg today and let us know what you discovered: https://codeberg.org/explore/repos

@Codeberg If anyone else is wondering: Migration turned out to be super easy. This helps: https://forgejo.org/docs/next/admin/gitea-migration/
On top of that, there is a function for migrating repos from GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and others. 👍

Protect your sources by protecting their metadata.

Learn what photos and documents can inadvertently reveal in our brief guide to media metadata 👇🏼

https://freedom.press/training/blog/metadata-101/

Farmers' anger at green rules are frequently cited as a reason for watering down the EU environmental law.

BUT
If you ask *farmers*, in France this is what they say:

"62% of farmers believe that the ecological transition is a necessity and 23% even consider that it is an opportunity : the refusal of the ecological transition is therefore today largely in the minority among farmers (15%)."

Here's the survey report:
https://www.bva-xsight.com/sondages/crise-agricole-sondage-bvaxsight-collectifnourrir/

h/t @BrabantsBurgerplatform
https://mastodon.social/@BrabantsBurgerplatform@mastodon.nl/112002388637564310

Huh. No one wants to come to my "Debate Me, Cowards!" store. https://www.gocomics.com/brian-mcfadden/2024/03/26

When a chart gets trotted out to chasten the ungrateful plebs and prove to them that they've got it made in the shade, like this one 👇 left unmentioned will be that the real wage gains of the low-income are 1) coming after decades of stagnation, and 2) starting from unlivabley low amounts. A 10% pay increase doesn't mean much if you were only making $10/hour to start with.

I feel like this (very good) essay from @interfluidity could be subtitled "how to propagandize with statistics." If you want to get a better handle on how the narratives we get fed by most media about the economy mislead, make sure to give this one a read.

https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/03/25/why-does-wage-compression-underwhelm/index.html

A lot of it has to do with the context that is (or is not) provided for whatever number is being trotted out to assure you that things are really great, regardless of what you're experiencing.

@GuerillaOntologist Thanks for the post! Redesigning punktv.com now and adding some unknown bands from back in the day!

"too smart to not be depressed"

I mean...

privilege does play into that, right? the ability to ignore the hellscape because it doesn't impact you?

but it's also... okay? to not doomscroll all day? like you have a limited amount of spoons to give, so you prioritize

taking someone who's neutral and going:

"arg why aren't you freaking out like I am that the world is burning you aren't doing enough?!??!?!"

vs

"hey, I care about ABC, so later on me and the crew were gonna talk about XYZ steps to make the world a better place. you wanna join?"

like, yes the world is on fire, and needs action now.

motivating people to do something is a skill.

anybody with half a brain can alienate people into inaction.

if "Aaaaahhh!! on fire!" motivates you and your friend group, cool.

I'm trying to motivate a bunch of peaceful, privileged, "it doesn't affect me yet" folks.

they would instantly tune out a protest.
but they are someone who could do other stuff :)

organize to solve a smaller local problem, first.