Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

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I don’t like to butt in on the moderation happenings on another instance, but since people on my instances are now getting involved, I feel I have to. Hachyderm’s mod team removed a post from one of their members, believing it to be incorrect information after it was reported to them as being incorrect information. The person whose post was removed got upset and that has caused a bit of a firestorm response. @quintessence has been trying to answer questions but I want to add some context as a fellow admin/moderator.

The first thing to know is that moderators are not perfect. We make mistakes. I make them all the time, as some of you will no doubt recognize. Like Hachyderm, when anything goes awry, moderation-wise, it is our job to stand in front and take the heat from whatever went wrong. We DO. NOT. throw the mod team under the bus, assuming the moderators are acting in good faith.

The next thing to understand is that this is a thankless job. People get mad at us for taking action, for not taking action, for being too fast, for being too slow, for permitting something someone thinks should be blocked, and for blocking things someone thinks should be permitted. We see some awful shit. We get threatens of harm. We get doxed. We get angry letters from lawyers.

We also don’t have a team of fact checkers at the ready. We generally process dozens of reports per day. We have to apply a reasonableness test to incoming reports and respond based on the rules and guidelines we’ve set for our community and then move on, and if we made a mistake, we go and fix it.

I would ask that y’all afford some grace and understanding to the Hachyderm team and to the admins and moderators of fediverse instances generally. We aren’t the enemy. We are trying our best to manage a community at a time of unprecedented levels of tornadic bullshit, fear, anger, and hate.

Peace.

This week's comic: Playing the wealth card

#cartoon #comic #billionaires #uspol #oligarchy #authoritarianism #economy

GTK 4.18.1 is out! This is the first stable release of the 4.18 cycle, and includes a few last minute additions:

- fractional scaling support on macOS works again
- the Android backend uses GL rendering for top level surfaces

Plus, as usual, lots of bug fixes, performance improvements, and documentation updates.

You can download the release archive from the usual place: https://download.gnome.org/sources/gtk/4.18/

Or you can wait until your distribution of choice is updated to ship GNOME 48.

#gtk #gtk4 #gnome

The article has some useful context about Musk's career, notably what a sleazeball he has always been in his business and public dealings. It also points up the way governments have refused to do their regulatory jobs – and, less explicitly, how journalism has been a lapdog along the way.

But as it accurately points out Musk's desperate efforts to slow or reverse the well-deserved slide at Tesla, it doesn't get into the truly scary stuff. Namely, Musk won't give a damn about Tesla or its shareholders if his coup (per the first piece in this newsletter) succeeds. If he can divert U.S. government spending even more (see: SpaceX) into his bank accounts, Tesla will be an afterthought. Everything we know about this guy says there are no boundaries on his lust for money, and power. - @dangillmor

#GiftArticle #USPolitics
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/elon-musk-human-meme-stock/682023/?gift=E9o0y7Rlfcfv2OQ1sSVCEgkDEKZYs7EieUCMLo2g4Cg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

They can't defend themselves, and they refuse to defend you. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/3/14/2310085/-Cartoon-Democratic-defense

Has everyone noticed?
Here in #Germany almost all #supermarkets use #epaper displays to show prices. They look great. It's hard to notice that it's not ink on dead trees.
That's thousands of displays per shop. Times thousands of shops in the entire country.

Some of those displays break or otherwise get replaced.

So there must be piles of used displays around the country... but where?
Does any of my fellow #hackers know how to get some of that #trash treasure?

#recycling #upcycling

Ok, despite dealing with all the spam today, managed to do libadwaita releases, incl. 1.7.0: https://nyaa.place/blog/libadwaita-1-7/

I'm saving a ton of money over the last year. Here's my secret:

-Cancelled NYT subscription
-Cancelled WaPo subscription
-Cancelled Amazon Prime
-Cancelled Spotify

Turns out I'm saving money and also giving my more directly to smaller businesses, true journalists, and artists.

Really not that hard, people.

#democracy #collaborators #fascism #journalism

We explained how a bill advancing in the Florida legislature would "incentivize baseless accusations of defamation in hopes of getting articles taken down, by plaintiffs who know they won’t ultimately prevail in court."

https://freedom.press/issues/florida-lawmakers-want-online-news-outlets-to-self-censor/

📄 NEW: "To Survive This, We Must Break the Fourth Wall" With a potential government shutdown looming, old frames of left vs. right political conflict are breaking down. We're dealing with something much bigger — and it's time we talk about it frankly.
https://america2.news/to-survive-this-we-must-break-the-fourth-wall/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03/call-your-senators-this-morning-to-object-to-the-continuing-resolution-that-will-enable-cuts-to-social-security-medicare-medicaid-veterans-programs-and-more.html

Musk's latest amplification of fascist contempt for humanity is a reminder that if you are still on his evil platform -- especially if you're posting there -- you are supporting his vile business.

https://meidasnews.com/news/elon-musk-retweet-hitler-didnt-murder-millions-of-people-public-sector-workers-did

This goes 10x for journalists, who mock their craft and demonstrate a special kind of indifference to ethics and morality by sticking around.

Stop pretending otherwise.

In case you missed my SCALE22x talk on using Nextcloud as a sell-hosted, cross-platform groupware solution (or didn't attend SCALE at all), this link will take you to the right segment from the day's stream (thanks @kylegospo for the heads up!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THmFEgs_OIg&t=1h55m55s

#scale22x

Digital Sovereignty in Munich: Join us at the Nextcloud Summit 2025 https://nextcloud.com/blog/digital-sovereignty-summit-announcement/

Recently heard that a friend of mine who's been working at Redhat recently found out their entire team is being switched to IBM instead... it's sort of academic, since Redhat is owned by IBM, but the whole team is very unhappy about it.

Seems I'm the only one in the house who really enjoys leftovers. I've just had the heartbreaking task of culling 'overly mature' leftovers that, I'd been assured by others in the household, would be consumed in a timely manner. Sadly, they were not. The cycle of life-in-the-fridge - cruel though it might be - continues relentlessly along its unfeeling path.

Another triumph for Very Stable Genius David Seymour and his flawed far-right ideology.

A second provider of lunches for New Zealand schools goes into liquidation.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360614966/another-school-lunch-provider-goes-liquidation