Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Funny old world we live in, ain't it? Striking workers at the capitalist factory in the "communist" country. Makes you wonder about the value of those labels...and also if there will be any international solidarity from Apple customers in the US? Somehow I doubt it.

https://www.engadget.com/apple-foxconn-iphone-plant-in-china-rocked-by-violent-protests-100639946.html

A fascinating new report claims that companies like Google and Amazon are losing tens of billions of dollars on their voice assistant devices, despite widespread adoption, because the plan to sell them under cost and then make up the difference in money made from interactions isn't working, because their customers refuse to use the devices for anything that makes these companies money. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/#p3

#tech #industry #voice #assistant #alexa #siri #google #loss #bomb #failure

@lightweight Literally just had a discussion with a "journalist" who has received money from Google before, upset for me accusing someone he interviewed of "shilling" who works for a trade group funded mostly by FAANGs and founded and run by Google's former head of Public Policy. And he didn't seem to see anything wrong with that. 🙄

To the many who've joined the Fediverse this past week, just a clarification: the 'big tech' folk you see here from Microsoft/Google/Amazon/etc. have mostly also only just arrived, too, smelling 'green fields' into which to proselytise on behalf of their exploitative hyper-tech corp employers. If, for example, you think Microsoft is now a friend of #FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) then you've bought their PR. They are not. They're a tapeworm in the healthy gut of FOSS community ecosystems.

*** POLL ***

How would you describe yourself politically?

Please vote, comment, and BOOST (very important)

Thank you.

H/t @the_meghaning from the other site.

“Elon Musk called Trent Reznor a "crybaby" for deleting his Twitter account. Wil Wheaton then wrote this incisive summary of the man-child that is Elon Musk.”

I wasn’t much aware of Musk before the bird site acquisition. Cars & Space, but not any sense of who he is. That’s changed

Increasingly he sounds & looks very very damaged.

This post sums it up.

Toby Shone's declaration of solidarity with #Anarchist #PoliticalPrisoner Alfredo Cospito (in hunger strike in Italy) from G4S Parc Prison in Whales.

thread (1/4)

Give @Indigenousaction a follow! And check out this upcoming event on Thursday, November 24th.

Indigenous Action presents:
15th Annual No Thanks, No Giving!

Indigenous Autonomy and Anarchism
Indigenous Action hosts Bonn & Klee will join featured guest speaker Tawinikay in a panel style discussion on Indigenous Autonomy and Anarchism: Against Settler Politics.

Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022
4:30pm – 6:00pm MST.
Livestream: www.indigenousaction.org/live/
STREAM LINK: https://youtu.be/wGvjKoc-V94

#nothanksnogiving #thanksgiving #anticolonialism #anarchy #indigenousanarchism

INDONESIAN MUTUAL AID DISASTER RELIEF REQUEST

An #earthquake in #Cianjur has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced. The local hospital is running out of water and supplies and aid access from Bogor is being cut.

My friends in Cianjur who are running mutual aid projects are in an incredibly grave situation.

Please donate whatever you can.

PAYPAL LINK: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/afsalmuhammad07

FUNDS GO DIRECTLY TO @pasargratisan (on IG), a Mutual Aid/gotong royong project in the Cianjur regency.

If you cannot donate, please boost!

@igd_news

#NewReporting: Major tax filing companies—including TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block—have been sending users' information to Facebook as they file their taxes online.

The penalties for disclosing data without consent could be steep.

#Data #Privacy #Facebook #Meta https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/11/22/tax-filing-websites-have-been-sending-users-financial-information-to-facebook

I'm here looking for interactions. I'm not into #doomscrolling. If you post / #boost / reshare a dozen times a day, I probably won't follow you. At the moment, I'm mostly suspending this choice due to the influx of twitter refugees. I'm writing this from #Friendica, not #Mastodon, so I can post longer things too. Be aware that you don't have to use the #Fediverse like twitter.

The latest: Now Raffensperger is dropping his appeal.

On the subject of Georgia, I'll be working again as a volunteer voter protection lawyer for the GA runoffs.

My contribution is to participate in what's called the boiler room handling problems that arise in polling places.

(I didn't sign up for Saturday though !!)

I've been doing volunteer voter protection legal work since 2016.

There are lots of other volunteer opportunities GA, some remote.

See: https://secure.ngpvan.com/okWijBNa7kiWFyngCpBGsQ2

3/

Every Toot down in Tootville liked Fediverse a lot
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Tootville, did not!
The Grinch hated Fediverse! The whole federation!
Now, please don't ask why, there is no explanation.
It could be his app's round trip times weren't tight,
It could be, perhaps, the bots weren't counted right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been his net worth's $42B too small.

So we're talking about 'open banking' now... https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018868061/open-banking-how-it-works-and-where-to-next it's all so broken, it's embarrassing. No open standards, all focused on proprietary software. I'm not convinced there's anything legitimately 'open' here.

I wrote about the danger of Trumpism

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/donald-trump-2024-running-for-president

https://gogetfunding.com/emergency-moving-fund-2/

"Recently, our absentee landlord, who lives in Australia, sent us an email message saying that on January 1, 2023, we will have to pay an additional $350 to rent the house where we have lived since April 2016. We cannot afford to pay the new rent and are being forced to move.

When we moved into the house, it was under a subsidized rent program created by a group of local real estate agents for senior citizens and low-income people. As a result, our rent has been low. The house is old, built in 1912, and is located in a low-income, inner-city neighborhood in Kansas City. Mr. Scrooge, the landlord wants us to pay $350 more in rent but won’t make the repairs necessary to make it worth the extra money. This is urban gentrification at its worst. Furthermore, the landlord is in violation of Kansas City rental housing regulations by not having a local property manager for the past five years. The house is poorly insulated. Consequently, JoNina and I have had to put insulation on the windows and doors to keep cold air out in the winter. This is a job for a property manager–not the tenants.

We have to move out of the house by January 1, 2023. As senior citizens, moving suddenly like this poses a threat to our health and security. We’ve not been able to find housing in Kansas City because of widespread discrimination against ex-offenders like me. We plan to move to my hometown, Chattanooga, Tennessee, where family and friends will help us secure housing. However, we must stay in Kansas City during January while we conclude our business here, including a medical procedure that I need at the Veterans Administration Hospital. We must rent storage space in Kansas City for our personal property, and we’ll have hotel expenses. Our total moving expenses will be at least $10,000."

I just made an new Mastodon instance focused on #neuroscience at https://synapse.cafe . I'd like this to be a cozy space to discuss the wonders of the brain, from cells to thoughts. If you do research in neuroscience or even have a general interest in it, come by and check it out!

#instance #mastodon

The black activists being banned from various masto instances for "racism" as they describe their own experiences fighting racism in the US are a terrible look for Mastodon.

Folks should be ashamed.