Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Paying a subscription fee to bag your own groceries and act as a cashier is some Tom Sawyer level fuckery.

It appears that Atlas Network are targeting New Zealand because we rate highly on their ‘freedom index’. That means that they assess us as both more susceptible to libertarian ideas and the neoliberal reforms to NZ have left us more openly to the type of business they prefer. It means the bootstraps and welfare queen type messaging are effective here. Both which are now being directed at Māori who supposedly get ‘special treatment’. It’s grim. #nzpol

The auto industry has almost completely abandoned the idea of selling affordable cars in the U.S. https://www.motor1.com/features/710453/cheap-cars-dead/

China is plainly planning to fill the gap, as Japan did some decades ago.

This will -- guaranteed -- lead to a furious response, but that won't include US carmakers actually competing. The response will be protectionism, because one thing history has shown us is that American companies facing foreign competition are terrified of actual competition.

Everyone said get a Brother printer so I bought a 3-in-1 scanner and printer. There seems to be something wrong with it though. I plugged it into a Linux laptop, opened a document, pressed print, selected the printer, and it printed. Then I opened simple-scan, pressed scan, and it scanned.

This isn't how printers and scanners are supposed to work. Where do install the drivers that don't work properly etc? This was no fun. I demand a refund.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/15/canada-moves-to-protect-coral-reef-that-scientists-say-shouldnt-exist

The ugly details are here.

https://cepr.net/report/pocketing-money-meant-for-kids-private-equity-in-autism-services/

These #PE goons have been trying to weasel their way into the #WorkerCoop space, and I think we should reject them all with extreme prejudice. Why? Because you don't invite vampires into your house. Anybody who thinks they can play nice with PE d-bags and not get taken to the cleaners has a credulity problem, imnsho. The people who do this kind of thing do not care about workers, no matter what they say or how much money they throw at "worker empowerment".

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/card-blackstone-kids-autism-private-equity-bankruptcy-rcna118544

The people over at Tech for #Palestine are doing good work: https://techforpalestine.org/

I added the banner to my personal site.

#NoTechForApartheid

@gnumdk For #squeekboard thanks should go to @dcz mostly

Ability to easily build custom keyboard layouts is really awesome.

Thanks you @agx

#linux #Phosh #squeekboard

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award is being presented to 4 MEN and 1 WOMAN this year.

It gets worse.

The 4 MEN are:

Rupert Murdoch
Elon Musk
Michael Milken
Sylvester Stallone

This is not a joke. This is real.

Some of you know today as π-day.

But the real insiders know that today is the 30th anniversary of the 1.0 release of Linux.

Another scathing look at the private equity and hedge fund looters who buy up businesses and degrade customers, employees, and communities. In this case it's especially reprehensible, because the "customers" are elderly people are get treated like absolute garbage. https://theconversation.com/for-profit-nursing-homes-are-cutting-corners-on-safety-and-draining-resources-with-financial-shenanigans-especially-at-midsize-chains-that-dodge-public-scrutiny-225045

And bonus, it's all paid for by our tax dollars.

The people running these companies should be forced to live in the facilities they operate.

Contributing to Codeberg:

There are now chat rooms for #Backups and #Ceph under the Codeberg #Matrix space: https://matrix.to/#/#codeberg-space:matrix.org

Consider joining the efforts if you are interested.

Full list of areas looking for contribution, including non-technical work: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Contributing

What do House Dems like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Barbara Lee have in common with House GOPers like Thomas Massie and Andy Biggs? Not a lot. But they do know an unconstitutional bill when they see one, like this #TikTok ban. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/why-us-house-members-opposed-tiktok-ban-bill

It's the 26th anniversary of SNL's only airing of likely the most subversive sketch in the show's entire history: "Conspiracy Theory Rock" –– a Robert Smigel cartoon that, unsurprisingly, would be cut from all future reruns.

Smigel (my old boss!) posted this version today, which is much higher quality than the terrible one going around YouTube. Share this one!

His original post: https://twitter.com/TriumphICDHQ/status/1768279398132723857

For folks still actively using #Github for their #libre software activities, this is worth a read: https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ I left Github shortly after Microsoft announced they were acquiring it (I should've done so sooner). Now I host a few Gitlab (Community Edition) instances and my own personal Forgejo instance. Both platforms are great (I prefer the fully #libre nature of Forgejo, though).

An Israeli tank killed Reuters reporter Issam Abdallah in Lebanon last year by firing two 120 mm rounds at a group of "clearly identifiable journalists" in violation of international law, a U.N. investigation into the Oct. 13 incident has found. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-strike-killed-clearly-identifiable-reuters-reporter-un-report-2024-03-13/

Dev-focused tools that solve generic problems exclusively working with either GitHub or GitLab repos is really saddening. The software development world does not revolve exclusively around these two platforms. It is entirely possible to build most of these awesome tools in a platform-agnostic ways. The creators choose not to because it's easier and they don't care about those platforms, even though they end up excluding large swathes of the software development ecosystem.