Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

We will be having scheduled downtime today around 18.00 CET (17.00 CET).

Read all about it: https://status.codeberg.eu/status/codeberg

Flock, the surveillance company that has been installing license-plate-reading cameras everywhere -- with predictable privacy harm -- claims it's a wonder drug for the police.

In the process of self-promotion, it uses in-house surveys that outside researchers are calling questionable at best. https://www.404media.co/researcher-who-oversaw-flock-surveillance-study-now-has-concerns-about-it/

So who are the corporations and billionaires funding the American far right?

A lot of the discourse around the US far right, on both the left and the right, has presented it as being essentially a working class movement.

White working class Southerners (perhaps with some manipulation from Russia) advocating for their prejudiced world view, the narrative goes.

But what if that's not the situation? What if the rise of the far right has been funded with millions of dollars from extremely wealthy individuals?

Where are the resources coming from?

You probably already know about Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and Elon at Twitter, but there's a few others...

"Two billionaire Texas brothers whose fortunes derive from oil and gas fracking have pumped millions of dollars into rightwing media outfits that have promoted climate-crisis denialism.

...

"Farris and Dan Wilks have each doled out millions of dollars through separate foundations over the last decade to a number of high-profile conservative and religious groups including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.

"The Wilks brothers, for instance, have poured millions of dollars into PragerU and the Daily Wire

...

"In 2015, Farris Wilks gave $4.7m to help launch the Daily Wire and remains an owner of the media company, whose founding editor and co-owner Ben Shapiro has forged ties with Dennis Prager, the PragerU founder and talkshow host. Shapiro and Prager are slated to attend a PragerU “founders’ retreat” in September for donors who give at least $100,000 a year."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/05/texas-fracking-billionaire-brothers-prageru-daily-wire

"[One America News] founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.

"AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms ... according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant."

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oneamerica-att/

"[Robert] Mercer is a Christian conservative, gun enthusiast, a climate change denier, religious, small-government proponent and a man who despises the political establishment as incompetent and corrupt. He has donated over $100 million (€84 million) to various right-wing candidates and think-tanks. Most of that money has gone through the Mercer Family Foundation, run by Robert Mercer's daughter Rebekah.

"The Mercers hold a major stake in a company called Cambridge Analytica, which uses digital data to tailor election propaganda to voters.

"The Mercers first met Andrew Breitbart, the founder of what is now Breitbart News Network in 2011 ... The Mercers also invested $10 million in Breitbart and gained a large stake in the nascent company."

https://www.dw.com/en/who-are-the-mercers-the-wealthy-backers-of-breitbart/a-42100407

(1/2)

@politics #capitalism #politics #uspol #environment #america #business #ClimateChange #trump #elon

People who are interested in joining our #Ceph teams are welcome in the respective Matrix channel, which can be found via our Matrix Space.

Details: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Contributing/issues/49

How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing

One quarter of residents in the French capital live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive plan to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d00.Zygo.7GiMG1xtQB_q&smid=url-share

If you had code on GitHub at any point it looks like it might be included in a large dataset called “The Stack” — If you want your code removed from this massive “ai” training data go here:

https://huggingface.co/spaces/bigcode/in-the-stack

I found two of my old Github repos in there. Both were deleted last year and both were private. This is a serious breach of trust by Github and @huggingface.

Remove all your code from Github.

CONSENT IS NOT OPT-OUT.

"Becoming Unpopular: Conspiracy and Political Struggle Today" with AK Thompson at Cornell University's A.D. White House, 5pm this Friday. Co-sponsored by PM Press.

Thought for the day:

Billionaires are a symptom of poverty.

(Paraphrasing Iain Banks on money, but more specific to our times because we still need some way to allocate scarce resources, just: not like that.)

Adventures at #coding : load-bearing #comments.

In today's code base, comments are no longer comments. Write the wrong thing inside and the software stops working.

I will mercifully not disclose the name of the project.

#programming

I've always thought that citizens assemblies are good ideas, but now that I've been part of one I'm all in.

I was in a room with people I would never normally associate with, and we all brought different points of view. I care deeply about fairness, but others cared more about the environment, healthcare, education.

Experts came in to address us, giving us facts.

CAs might not be the whole solution to every problem, but they should be part of it

We’re seeking input from #FOSS maintainers as we design a fellowship program pilot. We want to test a support mechanism that addresses structural issues in the FOSS ecosystem, and support maintainers who work on open digital infrastructure in the public interest.

If you maintain open source projects, we would be very grateful if you could take ten minutes to respond to the survey:
https://survey.sovereigntechfund.de/968766

Please also repost and share with FOSS maintainers you know. Thanks!

Republicans already have a plan to rapidly privatize Medicare if Trump wins.

Tucked deep into Project 2025 is a call to “make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.”

This would be a historic handout to the insurance industry.

And the death of Medicare as we know it.

The turn to fascism in America isn’t coming just (or even primarily) from crazed fanatics. It’s coming from well funded “think tanks” full of well dressed and well fed pseudoscholars who imagine themselves to be reasonable and mannerly. https://journa.host/@w7voa/112124274481988039

You really need to read this thread, in which a witness tells of a dinner in which Trump couldn't stop talking about his appreciation of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mar-lago-judge-stark-ruling-022208652.html

Combine this with our wannabe dictator's regular denigration of certain people as sub-humans, and his relentless overall bigotry and hatred.

Journalists still can't believe what's right in their faces. They'd better start, soon.

We'd all better wake up, or we're done.

Three cybersecurity researchers discovered close to 19 million plaintext passwords exposed on the public internet by misconfigured instances of Firebase, a Google platform for hosting databases, cloud computing, and app development.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/misconfigured-firebase-instances-leaked-19-million-plaintext-passwords/

Adding real names to user profiles without users' consent “is sort of at cross purposes with the promises and goals of the Glassdoor review website," EFF’s @aaronmackey told @arstechnica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/glassdoor-adding-users-real-names-job-info-to-profiles-without-consent/

A trial court held that Snap, the maker of Snapchat, could be liable for harm to users because of widely-used features like disappearing messages. If the decision is upheld, billions of internet users will lose. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/eff-california-appellate-court-reject-trial-judges-ruling-would-penalize

🗓️ Mark your calendar: Join us and the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace & Democracy on March 27 at 7 pm ET for an important panel discussion: "The Pentagon Papers and the Ongoing Threats to Freedom of the Press"

With FPF's Trevor Timm; Danielle Brian of the Project On Government Oversight; and @knightcolumbia's Jameel Jaffer

RSVP: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rHp9zpI5QqWOqF1H_Vd54A#

What's the use case for access time in #unix ?

In my entire career I don't think I needed it once.

What was so important that people were ready to pay the penalty of writing on every read?

What is the #history of that anyway?

#askfedi #linux #posix #computing

Hey Aotearoa Fedi - I'm trying to remember who owns Trademe these days... can anyone remind me off the top of their heads?