Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The State Department recently announced an unprecedented new requirement that applicants for student and exchange visas must set all social media accounts to “public” for government review. This mass surveillance is an outrageous violation of privacy. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/you-shouldnt-have-make-your-social-media-public-get-visa

I'm looking for an online service that is able to find nearby EV charging stations where one can select socket type / charging speed / accepted payments but it *only* uses #OpenStreetmap data. Is there such a thing already? (I'm aware that I can use overpass queries but am looking for something reaady made).

#FediPpower

This week’s comic now up on Daily Kos
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MAGA GOGGLES
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/24/2334817/-Cartoon-Tom-the-Dancing-Bug-looks-through-the-MAGA-goggles

President Trump: It’s Not Doable for #AI Companies to Pay for All Copyrighted Input - https://torrentfreak.com/president-trump-its-not-doable-for-ai-companies-to-pay-for-all-copyrighted-input/ “When a person reads a book or an article, you’ve gained great knowledge. That does not mean that you’re violating #copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider”

#FDA’s artificial intelligence is supposed to revolutionize drug approvals. It’s making up studies - https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/23/politics/fda-ai-elsa-drug-regulation-makary “Anything that you don’t have time to double-check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently,” said one employee — a far cry from what has been publicly promised.

Thousands of river pollution tests cancelled because of staff shortages - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24xy8zgp4o the UK EnvironmentAgency remains rubbish; shut it down and start again...

Since Microsoft is organising a European Sovereign Tech Fund, we should ask Lockheed Martin to put together a European Sovereign Defense Fund. There’s probably also opportunity here to bring Amazon in to advise on EU labour standards and have McDonald’s take the lead on food safety policy in the EU.

CC @EUCommission

#EU #USA #corporateCapture #europeanSovereignTechFund #microsoft #github #openSource #freeSoftware #tech #freedom #humanRights #democracy

I'll be on a panel titled "Comics Your Way" at San Diego Comic-Con at 1pm Thursday: https://sched.co/26wgZ

Merz says he won't put pride flags on Bundestag for pride. So BVG (the Berlin public transportation company) put pride flags all over the Bundestag station 😂

“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S., which has long held political prisoners, is ramping up its oppressive tactics.” https://theintercept.com/2025/07/23/feds-criminalize-protests-masked-ice/

Based on my experience making a “Made in USA electronics” phone, I would be very surprised if someone could pull off a true Made in USA laptop (not just assembled in the USA) with only a 20% markup. At least for the first model.

It’s not just that the BoM is more expensive (20% may cover that?), but all of the up front costs to set up manufacturing lines, molds, testing, NRE fees, etc.

That said, I’d love to see it, especially with Framework repairability.

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/palmer-luckey-considering-entering-laptop-market-with-fully-us-made-model-wants-to-know-if-youd-spend-20-percent-more-for-an-american-made-pc

Trump regime knows perfectly well that it was sending innocent people to the El Salvador concentration camp where they would be tortured and, in some cases, murdered in collusion with that country's evil government.

https://archive.ph/TWiAs

Fascism is American policy. Don't pretend otherwise.

Buried in Proton's AI announcement today is a pretty shocking detail about their service 👀

Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.

#Proton #Switzerland #Privacy #EuroStack #ProtonMail

🚀 OFE Publishes Landmark Study Calling on Funding Europe’s Open Digital Infrastructure through an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF)

Our new report urges creation of an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) to fix chronic underfunding of open source technologies – the backbone of Europe’s digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and competitiveness.

🔗 Check it out: eu-stf.openforumeurope.org

🔗 Check out our summary: https://openforumeurope.org/ofe-launches-landmark-study-calling-for-an-eu-sovereign-tech-fund-to-secure-europes-digital-future/

#OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #EU

Free software is critical infrastructure, yet its upkeep falls on volunteers while giants like Microsoft or Google profit. As with other public goods, they should fund it via a dedicated tax feeding (like roads) a European fund (EU-STF) to ensure security and digital sovereignty. Europeans shouldn’t pay so Amazon can remain a free rider.

#OpenSource #TaxTheTechGiants #DigitalCommons #EUSTF #PublicGoods #FLOSS #CyberResilience #linux #kde #fsfe #gnome #FOSS #EU

‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/we-faced-hunger-before-but-never-like-this-skeletal-children-fill-hospital-wards-as-starvation-grips-gaza "For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly" pure sadism by #israel #gazagenocide

Catalyst Cooperative is a tech worker co-op that curates the free, open-source Public Utilities Data Liberation project (PUDL). Listen to @ZaneSelvans and three of his co-owners talk about the whys and wherefores or being a worker cooperative in the tech sector.
#Cooperatives #WorkerCoops #OpenData

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBjjAyeEEvU

this video has gained a total of -1 subscribers on the YewChewb

absolutely incredible performance

🔴 Brand new comic now up on Boing Boing
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“MAGA GOGGLES”
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https://boingboing.net/2025/07/23/tom-the-dancing-bug-maga-goggles.html