Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Let's talk about where the NGO-industrial complex fits into the Mozilla picture.

Adam Conover did a great video on why the billionaire owner of Patagonia set up a cluster of charitable entities and gave them ownership of the company;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I

Spoilers: it wasn't nearly as charitable as it looked. For one thing, it was a huge tax dodge. It was also carefully structured so they could still use revenue from Patagonia for political influence campaigns.

(1/?)

#Mozilla

"Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, a sum I personally think of as instant inter-generational wealth. Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years."

#CalPaterson, 2020

https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

For comparison, I'm looking for funding to pay 3 people to work on a fediverse hosting co-op. If all 3 of us were paid $100 an hour, for 40 hours each a week, that's $624,000 a year. Baker's 2018 salary could cover this for more than 4 years.

WTF?!

An article highlighting #startup success, "built and sold a $600M enterprise software..." suggests an #OpenSource failure.

"WSO2, an open source enterprise software provider with customers such as Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, recently agreed to be acquired by private equity giant EQT."

While the owners/investors must be pleased, I wonder how the contributors, collaborators, community, and adopters feel.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/03/meet-the-founder-who-built-and-sold-a-600m-enterprise-software-startup-from-sri-lanka/

@singe @pluralistic @defcon

The age of being looked after is over. As a software developer I am being treated gradually more and more like a factory worker. They have us doing timesheets now, on top of all that Agile/Jira crap.

This is why I am with much trepidation, doing my own thing and hopefully I will have my own company to fall back on when this ride meets its demise.

New versions of Windows might change the UI or underlying components, but they don't change the only thing important to know about Windows: it's nonfree software. Choose software that actually respects its users instead. https://u.fsf.org/3eu

The man is going for the #librarians vote.

>This veep likes books! Governor Tim Walz put a Little Free Library in the Minnesota capitol. https://lithub.com/this-veep-likes-books-governor-tim-walz-put-a-little-free-library-in-the-minnesota-capitol/

#FreeLittleLibrary #libraries #books #reading #literacy

@xgranade IMO if I can't *read* something without logging in, it us no longer part of the *public* internet

Even aside from everything else about Facebook, the fact that everything is on the other side of a login portal is just a huge barrier to sharing stuff on the Internet.

If you do cool shit, please don't make folks log into Facebook to see it!

I like these stylish posters that have gone up around Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ.

"I choose unity. I honour Te Tiriti."

It's a simple, hopeful, and effective antidote to some of the politics here at the moment.

(As an aside, I'm perennially disappointed that these kinds of advocacy campaigns don't use their own websites, or ethical social media, and instead only direct people to Instagram and Facebook.)

#NZ #IndigenousPeople #NZPol

Are there any organizations publishing lists of current newspapers and magazines and their track record on disinformation, bias, and/or selective reporting?

(boosts welcome)

Latest comic: JD Vance, friend to women

#vance #gender #women #climate #climatechange

Between October 7 and November 14 2023, 9,500 takedown requests were sent from the Israeli authorities to social media platforms, of which 60 percent went to Meta with a reported 94% compliance rate. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/digital-apartheid-gaza-unjust-content-moderation-request-israels-cyber-unit

I know someone is working on (another) one of these articles, because *every* successful woman that doesn't have any real glaring flaws, gets the treatment of one of these articles.

Men demanding high standards, pushing teams to the limit, having a culture of direct feedback, and not taking enough time for pleasantries, or sugar coating, like Steve Jobs, are glorified. But women aren't allowed to do that. Especially not Black women.

2/N

Just not in that order.

Vote for her, of course, but do be aware of what you're getting. If Harris wins it will be because Trump is so terrible, not because she's so great. And if we continue insisting that Harris actually is great, despite all evidence to the contrary, we probably shouldn't wonder overmuch about why conditions in this country and around the world seem to just keep getting worse. Acceptance is the first step to recovery, after all.

WTAF Secret Service?

"...But later that afternoon, another security camera, pointing at the door from the inside of the building, spotted four other people over the course of nearly two hours. 2 people wearing emergency medical services uniforms and one person in a camouflage law enforcement uniform walked in. The 4th person, wearing a dark suit and white shirt like a Secret Service officer, stood by the door. The salon's security alarm rang the whole time..."

https://www.businessinsider.com/secret-service-busted-salon-use-bathroom-owner-2024-8

https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-november-3-2020/
"[The] conventional narrative places a lot of importance on the ability of the movement to win over the white majority, particularly in the north. But if we look more closely at how the movement [succeeded], the story is very different."

"[W]e found... that the movement in Birmingham succeeded because it was able to disrupt economic power centers in Birmingham itself, namely the downtown merchants and the folks who comprised the Chamber of Commerce in Birmingham."

Paris Agreement thresholds crossed

"Note that neither the 1903-1924 base (image top) nor the 1991-2020 base (above image) are pre-industrial. When using a genuinely pre-industrial base, the temperature anomaly has over the past thirteen months also been above the 2°C threshold that politicians at the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged wouldn't be crossed.

"Meanwhile, the IPCC keeps downplaying the danger, e.g. by claiming that we're still well below the 1.5°C threshold."

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2024/08/paris-agreement-thresholds-crossed.html

Do you have any plans for next weekend yet?

#FrOSCon is a coming and there is lots of interesting talks, workshops and conversations to be had 🚀

Even if you can't attend in person,
you can join remotely using our #matrix channel #froscon-linux-mobile:matrix.org

https://matrix.to/#/#froscon-linux-mobile:matrix.org

Don't forget to

#apt #install #confy to follow the conference

#froscon2024 #chatty

I realize it isn't fashionable these days, but I really think that discourse is improved when conversation focuses on good vs. bad behaviors rather than good vs. bad people.

More specifically, *avoiding the use of nouns* to refer to groups of people (even people who do very bad things) helps with all of the following: 1. clarity of thought about where the problems lie, 2. remembering that humans have the capacity to change, and 3. facilitating strategic alliances.