Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Getting an Old Fashioned... but not in a nice way.

"Majority (55%) of Britons think under 18s should be banned from using #VPNs" - https://yougov.co.uk/topics/technology/survey-results/daily/2025/08/19/acbfe/2 most people are idiots, and don't understand why VPNs are vital #security #privacy

Privacy‑Preserving #AgeVerification Falls Apart On Contact With Reality - https://www.techdirt.com/2025/08/19/privacy%e2%80%91preserving-age-verification-falls-apart-on-contact-with-reality/ "It adds identity friction to lawful speech, supercharges data linkage, and hands governments and intermediaries a revocation switch. That’s not child protection; it’s infrastructure for control."

Exposure to "AI Assistance" lowers doctors' ability to diagnose cancer just after a few weeks.

"AI"s main effect on people is skill decay.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(25)00133-5/abstract

I read @oblomov's piece on the assault on the #OpenWeb by #BigTech and, yes, I got riled up just as @elena predicted.
So I curated some #RSS feeds in #Nextcloud News to calm myself and looked into replacing my dusty website with a home-built #XML / #XSLT #indieweb #blog now that development for #PicoCMS has stopped.
https://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/google-killing-open-web/

Here are a couple of vine weeds to watch out for at the moment that are still uncommon but actively spreading around Ōtautahi-Christchurch, New Zealand.

What's commonly known as German Ivy (Delairea odorata) is a fast growing vine from, well, not anywhere close to Germany. It's a native to southern Africa. It's been establishing in parts of the Port Hills and I saw the first one in Halswell last week. Its leaves are thinner than English ivy and it has yellow flowers.
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/306208256

Chilean glory creeper (Eccremocarpus scaber) is an orange-flowered vine that's been popping up in and around the city. Every year I see a few more plants.
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/306208250

Weedbusters has fact sheets on these, including recommendations on how to get rid of them.
https://www.weedbusters.org.nz/what-are-weeds/weed-list/german-ivy/
https://www.weedbusters.org.nz/what-are-weeds/weed-list/chilean-glory-creeper/

Please report sightings on #iNaturalist if you find them.

#nz #weeds #InvasivePlants #InvasiveSpecies #iNaturalistNZ

Some days I really feel like everything I do trying to make the world better is a waste of time. Like my efforts are not only ineffective, but actively counterproductive. Like the world would be a better place if I spent my days smoking ganja and stacking supermarket shelves instead of trying to support community infrastructure projects.

But the only way to totally fail is not to try. Also this kind of ennui often results from relentless gaslighting by authoritarians. Fuck them.

The most overtly racist executive branch in at least a century says "Get used to it," and guess what?

Big Journalism systematically normalizes it.

Glad to see that NPR -- with federal money gone and thereby free to reflect reality, not bogus "both sides" -- still cares.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/18/nx-s1-5482921/memes-white-house-dhs-social-media-trump

Woodie Guthrie is doing more to fight fascism than most Dems and he’s been dead for 57 years. https://inthesetimes.com/article/new-protest-music-anti-fascist-folk-singer-woody-guthrie

Avelo Airlines profits off Trump’s terror tactics by running secretive (often illegal) deportation flights. We’re organizing to ground “ICE Air” by undermining the pillars that prop up Avelo’s business. Join our campaign to make Avelo Airlines’ deportation flights too costly to continue. https://www.groundavelo.org/?utm_source=mastodon

Microsoft have hidden a vulnerability in M365 Copilot from customers.

Copilot allowed access to enterprise files without generating access logs, MS patched it but didn’t issue a CVE or tell anyone about it.

https://pistachioapp.com/blog/copilot-broke-your-audit-log

"Corporations and politicians who discriminate against journalists who are lawful residents of the United States, presumably to score cheap political points, should be ashamed of themselves," Seth Stern told Penn Live.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/08/journalists-planning-to-cover-mccormick-perry-event-in-pa-must-prove-their-us-citizenship.html

Today marks the anniversary of the first IWW Little Red Songbook, published in 1909 to inspire workers with songs like “Solidarity Forever” by Joe Hill. A labor history classic. Get a copy of the 19th Edition here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=663

Stephen Miller's recruiting an occupying army of manbabies in tiny tactical vests. https://www.gocomics.com/brian-mcfadden/2025/08/18

“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered with data centers over time” is one of those crystallizations of an entire way of being so unimprovably perfect that it will be studied for centuries – if, indeed, there’s anyone left to study it. The most astonishing thing is that Altman neither appears to realize that he’s said the quiet part out loud, nor to perceive what’s so self-refuting about it.

"Will 2026 be the year of the Mainline Linux Smartphone?"

Slides of my talk from this year's FOSS on Mobile workshop at FroSCON are online and linked here:

https://programm.froscon.org/2025/events/3434.html

Originally, the talk was targeted at LinuxMobile developers. Yet I was very pleased that so many other people showed up. As it turned out, most of them don't use LinuxMobile on their daily driver smartphone today - and this is exactly what we need to change!

#froscon #froscon25 #FOSSonMobile #linuxmobile

Has anyone on here experienced the dread scenario of an interviewee trying to bullshit their way to a job using an LLM during a video call?