Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

If your organization works to investigate, expose, and prevent spyware around the world, this new funding initiative from the Ford Foundation is for you. https://fordfoundation.forms.fm/spyware-accountability-initiative-spring-2023-request-for-concept-notes/forms/9600

As a technologist I have to point out that the technological solutions to do this *safely* don’t exist. They are at best at the research stage. ML textual analysis schemes do exist, and often misfire. These systems will need to accomplish this task perfectly and also privately.

You might ask how the EU, famous for its focus on privacy, justifies the development of automated text-analysis tools that scan your private chats. The Impact Assessment has an analysis. To say that this analysis is deficient is really much too kind.

The EU’s “chat control” legislation is the most alarming proposal I’ve ever read. Taken in context, it is essentially a design for the most powerful text and image-based mass surveillance system the free world has ever seen.

Silicon Valley startups: We're libertarian, hate government regulation and oversight, and believe every person and business should be accountable for its own decisions and mistakes.

Also Silicon Valley startups: OMG,
#SVB has failed. The government better do a bailout, and the FDIC must protect all our assets expediently!

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/03/10/investing/svb-bank/index.html

I think it is fine for someone to use Mastodon DMs to send any message that they would also feel comfortable sending over unencrypted email. For some people that is "basically nothing" and for others that is "basically everything".

I am making this post so that I can link it in future discussions here so I do not have to type it again.

If you are seeing this post because I linked you to it: greetings from the past! It is March 20, 2023 and the weather today in Portland, Oregon, USA is dreary.

Periodic reminder: most Non-Disclosure Agreements represent an unbounded risk to your future professional viability an happiness. Signing them is a very bad idea.

Now this is legitimately ironic: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/billions-of-pcs-and-other-devices-vulnerable-to-newly-discovered-tpm-20-flaws Poor old #Microsoft can't catch a break. Yet again I thank my lucky stars that the idea of running MSFT Windows makes me puke in my mouth.

Latest statement from the defendants of the Aston Park / #Asheville Sanctuary Camp Defendants + a phone zap (3/3)

A small 12 member worker #coop provides best elderly home care in Finland.

This is according to a massive survey of service user satisfaction spanning 2800 providers with 42,000 respondents.

https://otlehti.pellervo.fi/2023/03/10/suomen-parasta-kotipalvelua-kalajokilaaksossa/

Without the incredible speed the #linux #kernel can #hibernate and #resume at, I wouldn't be so #productive on the go. It only takes a few seconds, which feels like roughly time time it would take to store 4 GB of RAM to disk.

Whoever did this, thank you. 🐧#opensource #foss

The recently dubbed 'BlackLotus' malware is particularly impressive. Frankly next level hellseed. A UEFI bootkit that completely bypasses SecureBoot, self-signs against non-OS components, shims its way into the bootloader and then onto persistence in the target OS.

Note that it's built to worm its way into other OSs on same physical machine (dual-boot systems, hypervisors like Parallels on Macs)

Exploits CVE-2022-21894, in all supported versions of Windows.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/unkillable-uefi-malware-bypassing-secure-boot-enabled-by-unpatchable-windows-flaw/

@atomicpoet

People need to understand.

#Google isn't a search engine.
#Facebook isn't a journal to share with your friend.
#Instagram isn't a public photo album.
#Twitter isn't a micro-blogging website.

They are all advertisement companies.

I've been a professional musician since the end days of selling CDs, and I would like to say that having experienced the decline of CD sales because of piracy transition into the paid streaming era it's unambiguous that musicians were better off when mostly everyone was pirating and then some people bought CDs or other merch out of a desire to support vs today when everyone pays a nominal fee to a corporation that pays us nothing and also satisfies their desire to support despite not actually offering support.

I would much rather you pirate anything I have made or worked on vs listening on streaming services, which are an objective nightmare for musicians. Even if you never intend to spend a penny, normalizing piracy is better for us than normalizing the current capitalist-realism nightmare where you get whatever you want and also get to relax into the fiction that you aren't exploiting musicians because you pay the price of one album per month to a giant corporation so you can feel ok about it.

@smallcircles @atomicpoet

I agree, I think the issue is we are mostly individuals or in small groups, so there is a huge decentralised entity behind free software, it is not seen has huge. I also find a lot of apathy, especially in Devon / Cornwall UK too.

LibrePlanet is next week, an opportunity to get together with other free software advocates and discuss, learn and communicae.

We can't let corporate take over the fediverse, to counter that we just do what we are doing, create content, have conversations and make it clear we have a different culture, we feel safe to discuss what is going on with the #Trans community and show solidarity with them.

Over time we will be stronger.

Main stream social media has it's influencers, we don't have that here, but we do have, for example the science community posting interesting content, or sharing news stories. I would rather read about some complex new discovery than be expected to try and keep up with the antics of some celebrity of influencer who with social media will be no one. A lot of kids want to be influencers, as they see it as easy money, the reality is the opposite, if the social media bubble bursts, then that whole ecosystem could burst with it.

I think the biggest adjustment people who're deeply invested in the proprietary software world experience when moving into the Fediverse is that people here confront them and their underlying assumptions. And that's entirely as it should be. Because this is the parallel universe that #FOSS built. This place exists without need for the rationalisations and expedience that allows otherwise good people to divide & the subjugate the world primarily for their benefit.

So... last night I pointed out that @filieesposito@mastodon.social, the editor for 9to5Mac made some pretty embarrassing factual errors in an article about Bluesky... and rather than fix those factual errors... he (1) blocked me on mastodon and (2) left the story as is.

In the past I had always considered 9to5Mac and its related publications to be credible sources of news, but now I feel the need to re-evaluate that.

Reporters make mistakes. We all do. It's how you *respond* that matters.