Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

See you at Software Freedom Day on September 18! CEO Todd Weaver will take the listener on a real journey on how the team at Purism solves the near-impossible time and time again. Thank you for organizing this event, Free Software Australia. https://freesoftware.org.au/blog/software-freedom-day/

It's the monopoly stupid.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/no-tech-monopolies-dont-serve-national-security

@zee

I don't know anything about specific brands, nor do I have personal experience, but you might want to do some research on the use of PFAS (environmentally persistent endocrine-disrupting chemicals) in whatever product you go with:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=biodegradable+takeout+container+pfas&t=ffsb&ia=web

It looks like there are at least some such containers that are marketed as PFAS free, but given the snafu with BPA-free stuff, I'm not sure whether PFAS-free will translate as safe.

Depending on how the program is set up, It might be worth looking into reusable containers and a system for users to wash and return the containers to you. Mason jars / Ball jars are relatively sturdy. Glass peanut butter jars are less sturdy but are free.

Wow. The course the OER Foundation is currently facilitating for 1200ish educators concentrated in the South Pacific, is running on a USD50/month Digital Ocean droplet. The initiation of the course, when you'd expect max resource hit is showing ~ 10% *peak* (CPU & Memory) resource use on that system. That suggests our infrastructure could easily handle 10x more learners or 10k learners. So that suggests a per learner cost of USD0.005/month. I'd say that's pretty cost-effective.

Hey #coop brain trust. Does anyone know of a good case study of the conversion of a consumer co-op into a consumer-worker hybrid.

I'm aware of a few multi-stakeholder food co-ops like Weaver Street Market, but don't know if their ownership structure was from the start, or if they changed it from a consumer co-op?

#coops #workercoop #foodcoop

"The new report shows that Indigenous communities resisting the more than 20 fossil fuel projects analyzed have stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25 percent of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions."

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/09/15/indigenous-actions-stop-billions-of-tons-of-emissions/

Holy Sh** #Microsoft has installed the simplest backdoor in your #Linux VMs without you knowing about it.

Microsoft Azure silently install management agents on your Linux VMs without an auto update mechanism, so you have to update manually but you don't know they exist because you didn't install them? 🤔

Simply remove the auth header and you are root. Remotely on all machines.🤯

https://www.wiz.io/blog/secret-agent-exposes-azure-customers-to-unauthorized-code-execution

Fire & Fury is raining down this Wednesday! Electronic Frontier Alliance’s @EthicsInTech is hosting over a dozen great speakers and performers on Big Tech’s role in surveillance and war. Check out our page for a discount: https://www.eff.org/event/fire-and-fury-throwing-monkey-wrench-big-tech

Thanks to @bigblen for pointing me at https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/13/eu_open_source_study_highlights/ - gee, wonder if NZ gov't could learn anything from these recommendations? On the plus side, we have a much smaller ship to turn around... On the negative... we haven't got a single IT-savvy politician (and only the most sporadic evidence of any savvy policy makers or advisers).

Accessible-Coconut: #Linux distro for blind and low-vision people

https://www.makeuseof.com/accessible-coconut-linux-distro-for-visually-impaired/

"Intuit to Acquire Mailchimp": https://www.investors.intuit.com/news/news-details/2021/Intuit-to-Acquire-Mailchimp/default.aspx

Welp, so much for that.

People subtracted on adding machines w/ a neat trick: the complements method. Convert a number to its complement, add it, and discard the extra "1" on the left. Many calculators with subtraction functions use this method under the hood: https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/subtraction-by-addition.html

#Facebook has reversed its systemic ban of mentions of #Mastodon. Good.

There is a debate over whether or not this #censorship was intentional. I believe it was. Whether a human specifically added joinmastodon.org to a blacklist or not, they have made quite deliberate decisions about their algorithm that serve their greed for engagement first, and the resulting low-quality dangerous information on FB is entirely predictable. Details: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10303-facebooks-blocking-decisions-are-deliberate-including-their-censorship-of-mastodon