Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Dear Western friends, allies and partners, the US has never been a champion/defender of democracy, it has always been an unreliable ally and bully, and the West, serving its own interests, has always helped them to practice global terrorism, destabilize countries, kill and murder millions of people all over the planet.

So don't pretend to be innocent, angry and betrayed, enough with the hypocrisy and double standards.

This is from the executive director of the !8F, the digital services agency within the General Services Administration (GSA) that develops open-source tools to improve digital services across the federal government.

"I am the Executive Director of 18F and 18F’s longest running employee- I have been at 18F for 10 years. You may not have heard of us, but last night proved that we are powerful. The way the administration ran to get rid of us under the cover of night and shut us down without warning proves that they were scared. They are too afraid to even speak to us.

We, like our many allies, had the “radical” idea that the government should be responsive to the needs of real people. We assembled amazing teams of technology professionals from different specialities who could work together and learn from each other. We shared what we learned with everybody.

I saw, time and time again, where we stood up for partners who were getting taken advantage of by vendors, or just needed help turning a vision into reality. We could make a simple website or a complicated system, we would do what we needed to best serve the mission and the public. We didn’t upsell anyone, we tried to teach our partners how to do what we did. I see them still prospering years after working with us.

We have proven methods that could be replicated, so we helped even more people through guides and writing. Those people are still going. And I am cheering them on.

We were living proof that the talking points of this administration were false. Government services can be efficient. You can work with agencies as they are now and work with them to better manage their services.

This made us a target. People who own skyscrapers are afraid of 100 people who made websites better. Not because of the latest tech fad, but because we proved that the government can be fixed, the government can be made better and the government can work for the people."

https://fedscoop.com/gsa-shutters-18f-possibly-leaving-agencies-in-the-lurch/

In some way the firing of gov tech workers is also about scaring others from taking alternatives paths other than exploitative tech work.

So many of us looked at big and mainstream and ad tech and surveillance tech today and said nope, and took our skills elsewhere.

This plants the seed of ‘do you really want this instability?’ Unsaid of course is that the people who are apparently thankful they said no to federal tech jobs to avoid such treatment, don’t feel empowered to also speak up about their poor treatment in the private sector. If you’ve been laid off by Meta the expectation is you’re still supposed to say thank you, I’m looking for new opportunities.

Federal government employees who have been treated poorly still have far more support than any private sector employee who has been laid off. Almost everyone is in a union, and there are lawyers that specialize in federal employment law.

This whole thing is about suppressing the power of labor.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/543445/skype-s-final-call-set-for-may-as-microsoft-prioritises-teams I've never installed MS Teams on any computer, nor have I ever participated in a call using it. Not planning on changing tack on that.

Who's performing at Trump's Branson on the Potomac? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/2/28/2306773/-Cartoon-Events-at-the-Trump-Center

This week's comic: "Protecting the children"

#uspol #comic #cartoon #children #education #lgbtq #climate #health #healthcare #transgender

Feeding the dreams of AI venture capital: if you want the VC money, just promise magic

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/03/01/feeding-the-dreams-of-ai-venture-capital-if-you-want-the-vc-money-just-promise-magic/

I feel like 90% of the frustrations people have with software (FOSS or otherwise) is with things getting continually changed around. I get that there are limits to what we can expect in terms of control over commercial software, but I expect better from open source projects. Is it really that hard to just leave well enough alone?

@catsalad Mozilla's new slogan: "We're doing everything the other browser companies do but adblockers still work, at least"

Is there a fosstodon like #peertube instance?

While all videos #phosh has on youtube were posted on the fediverse or phosh.mobi before it would be better to have at least the same kind of collection than on youtube (where we mostly publish to reach people stuck on proprietary OSes).

Can someone recommend a fitting peertube instance?

Unwelcome country: why have some conservative politicians stopped acknowledging Indigenous lands in #Australia? - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/01/unwelcome-country-why-have-some-conservative-politicians-stopped-acknowledging-indigenous-lands-in-australia astonishing: australia belongs to the aboriginal peoples; the others should be grateful to live there

#Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/ such a fall from grace: I remember when phoenix/firefox first came out...

I am now unemployed. I'm scared, but I'm so fluffing relieved to be out of that company.

If you are or know anyone in Sydney looking for an experienced IT generalist with experience in helpdesk, data recovery, networking, etc.? Please do hit me up <3

Bowie was onto something.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT3cERVRoQo

Many European governments are in the process of moving most of their INTERNAL communication to US controlled servers, in full view of the US intelligence apparatus. The political situation in the USA is however not going to get any less scary. Any (forced) migrations over summer might no longer be very wise. https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/europe_has_second_thoughts_about/

My bluesky account, which I signed up for for pragmatic reasons, has been flagged as a spam account. This happened right after I made two not-spam posts critical of Elon Musk.

I appealed but it's been ignored by whatever meatware or digital drones control their moderation. Additional appeal requests simply error: "Failed to submit appeal, please try again."

Everything is very shitty! So I wrote abount the unexpected connection between Punk Planet and the Gilmore Girls. https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-02-28-ppy10/