Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I thought I understood the extent to which the broad availability of mobile location data has exacerbated countless privacy and security challenges. That is, until I was invited along with four other publications to be a virtual observer in a 2-weeek test run of Babel Street, a service that lets users draw a digital polygon around nearly any location on a map of the world, and view a time-lapse history of the mobile devices seen coming in and out of the area.

The issue isn't that there's some dodgy company offering this as a poorly-vetted service: It's that *anyone* willing to spend a little money can now build this capability themselves.

I'll be updating this story with links to reporting from other publications also invited, including 404 Media, Haaretz, NOTUS, and The New York Times. All of these stories will make clear that mobile location data is set to massively complicate several hot-button issues, from the tracking of suspected illegal immigrants or women seeking abortions, to harassing public servants who are already in the crosshairs over baseless conspiracy theories and increasingly hostile political rhetoric against government employees.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/10/the-global-surveillance-free-for-all-in-mobile-ad-data/

It is amazing that any journalism organization, much less the NY Times, would quote Nate Silver on politics without disclosing that he is an "advisor" to political betting company with funding from Trump ally Peter Thiel.

Such shabby journalism, in every possible way.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-results-trump-harris.html?smid=tw-share

That civilians are being killed at an alarming rate in Gaza shouldn't be news to anyone. I suspect that for many this falls somewhere on the range from "civilians die in war, regrettably but inevitable" to "maybe Israel is being a bit careless, but who can blame them; Hamas is evil" extending at most to "Israel is being reckless, and I wish they would dial it back a bit". But none of that actually fully faces the depravity what is going on.

There is mounting evidence that Israel is engaged in a concerted strategy of mass starvation and destruction of civilian infrastructure in northern Gaza. I know that sounds too extreme to be real. It's tough to sound sane when the world is crazy. But this isn't my weird extremist anti-Zionist hyperbole. I have receipts.

[1/5]

(I'll put the rest of the thread behind CW)

Do you know what your cost savings are from using Open Source Software (#OSS) ❓

▶️ Harvard Business School has estimated in a recent paper that the value of OSS to the economy is 4.15 Billion USD. Firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software than they currently do if OSS did not exist. Apparently, OSS appears in 96% of codebases, and some commercial software consists of up to 99.9% OSS.

👉 https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=65230

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #Business #KDE #NLnet

Btw, they are super in violation of the GPL. They use u-boot and the linux kernel with custom patches and they are not accessible, even after asking. But they "want to honor open source licenses", but can't provide access. I guess

Holy fuck, after 2 weeks of reverse engineering this mips firmware dump I found the u-boot password!! Didn't have such an adrenaline rush in whole fucking while.
The fact, that I looked at that password several times in the hexdump and never tried it, we can ignore :D
#ReverseEngineering

We have traveled back in time, and webrings are a thing again. My blog is on https://akols.com/ which is an extremely selective collection of blogs that various people I've met over the blog write. It's maintained by Daniel Sidhion, who I met around a year ago, and who was recently like #2 on Hackernews for some absurd Nix hackery he was working on.

Check it out if you want to see some other neato writers in the tech space.

Surveillance tech like Fusus “gives police the ability to surreptitiously spy on and track people of no real or alleged criminal concern. It creates caches of sensitive, personal information that can be retained indefinitely,” EFF’s Beryl Lipton told Sacramento's ABC10.
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/crime/sacramento-public-safety-camera-network/103-e94b0a6d-1696-48bd-893a-29f53515d384

@hacks4pancakes “Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain

I think about this quote a lot.

The smell of death is everywhere in northern #Gaza after 'non-stop Israeli bombardments', Unrwa chief says - https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/oct/22/middle-east-crisis-live-blog-news-updates-israel-iran-lebanon-gaza-palestine-hamas-hezbollah-war "He said his staff are reporting shortages of water, food and medical care" #israel

I don't think I could feel any greater 'AI' -everything fatigue. I'm catching snippets of my wife (a lecturer at the polytech) listening to a presentation in the other room (via the poly's MS Teams, naturally. 🤮 ) on dealing with 'AI' in the classroom, and it's use (illicit & otherwise) by students. The presenters are effusively pro-'AI', and I find their enthusiasm incredibly grating and it makes me sad for humanity.

Fell in Love with Fire

Watch here:
https://crimethinc.com/fellinlovewithfire

Five years in the making, this hour-long documentary explores the uprising that swept Chile from October 2019 to March 2020, showing how everyday people sustained six months of rebellion by creating extensive networks of self-determination and mutual aid.

This is an inspiring portrayal of the tactics that gave demonstrators control of the streets, the organizing strategies that enabled the movement to act effectively while remaining leaderless, and the importance of time and space in revolt. It is also a cautionary tale about how the government used the promise of a new constitutional process to recover enough legitimacy to regain control. It chronicles a high point of action in a struggle that continues today.

On recent visits to the US (where I grew up) I was amazed at the friction I felt in most transactions. Having to add sales tax to everything mentally, paying tips, and literally every online transaction, e.g. renting a car, getting a phone SIM, was crowded with scam operators from every conceivable angle: service consolidators, speculative insurance providers, etc. The US 'system' is a chaotic mess. Every transaction seems prone to extra gotchas & not getting ripped off is exhausting there.

On Global Encryption Day, we urge Congress to get serious about protecting Americans’ privacy, and cut out the censorial sideshows.

https://freedom.press/issues/global-encryption-day-strengthen-encryption/

I don't think that leftists are going to matter at all electorally in the US -- there are too few of us, and those of us who do exist are mostly in states that the Electoral College makes unimportant. But I have to say I haven't seen a more outright hostile Democratic campaign and online group of self-appointed get-out-the-vote people in some time.

People are defending genocide as the lesser evil and showing incredible contempt for anyone who says it matters.

The maintenance was successfully completed and Codeberg is back in service. Additionally, we now have a 10G fiber interconnect to our next server, an important step towards our new setup.

I know Fedi isn't always the best platform for having substantive conversations, but if people are up for sharing, I'm genuinely interested in hearing people's reflections on how the upcoming U.S. election will affect them.  I'm interested in reflections from both USians and non-USians.

Does anything change for you personally if the U.S. election goes one way vs. another?  If so, what changes and how?

Boosts welcome.  Please be kind to one another.