Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Biden cancels student debt to the Art Institutes, where I once went to school, saying they "falsified data, knowingly misled students, and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies."

https://www.newsweek.com/student-loan-debt-cancelled-biden-art-institutes-1895976

"The governments across the West are increasingly turning to Stasi-like systems in efforts to silence criticism of the ruling class policies – from unpopular wars and climate change inaction to plunder and eugenic public health policies."

Unlike the East Germans, however, we all now willing carry our surveillance devices around with us everywhere we go. 😕

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/stasi-in-the-west.html

If you're not watching the #CityNatureChallenge in Aotearoa, things are heating up! We've got until the end of Sunday to upload all our observations and get all our species IDs completed.

Wellington burst out to a lead of over 2,000 observations during the four days of observing, but Christchurch has been steadily chasing them down. Wellington's only 535 observations ahead now.

Our cities are currently #9 and #10 in the Europe-Asia-Oceania-Africa competition.

https://inaturalist.nz/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-aotearoa-new-zealand

#CNC2024

Finished putting together my first card game. Going to playtest it with a friend this weekend. Pretty psyched.

TIL that the delimiter before an email signature is supposed to be "-- \n“ (two hyphens, a space, and a carriage return), per RFC 3676. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3676#section-4.3

“Brown University agrees to hold Israel divestment vote after pressure from student protesters”
https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4633580-brown-university-israel-divestment-vote-student-palestine-protesters/

[Full-time] Senior Product Manager, MediaWiki Integration Interfaces at Wikimedia Foundation https://www.fossjobs.net/job/11396/senior-product-manager-mediawiki-integration-interfaces-at-wikimedia-foundation/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Good fodder for your IT/Infosec budget discussions: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/microsoft-security-debt-crashing-down/714685/

Every day I'm flabbergasted by how unworthy Microsoft is of its 'success'. The best thing I can say about them is that they're really good at exploiting dysfunctional bureaucracies and inept officials using other people's money. https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/112362662145754607

Read All About How #Paywalls Are Bad For Democracy, Right Behind This Paywall - https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/30/read-all-about-how-paywalls-are-bad-for-democracy-right-behind-this-paywall/ "I have always argued that it’s best to make the core reporting free. You can then charge for other things and see if you can get people to support you."

New interview:
Oceania 2084 - roleplaying in a dystopian setting

You'll find the audio here: https://www.aradio-berlin.org/oceania-2084-roleplaying-in-a-dystopian-setting/

Length: 18 min

People with an antiauthoritarian mindset do often enjoy games. Besides boardgames, their interest have also been on roleplaying games (RPGs), a kind of cooperative storytelling game at a table based on a concrete rule system. Johan Eriksson, an anarchist game designer has recently published such an RPG called "Oceania 2084", based on George Orwell's novel "1984". We talked to him during his run of a Kickstarter campaign for a printed version of the game. Deadline is 10 May 2024. Enjoy and spread the info!

The #Forgejo monthly update was published ✨ It is a high level overview of the project activities.

Contributors celebrated the release of Forgejo v7.0 and Codeberg was upgraded the next day. A lot of effort went into the automation of the development process. As Forgejo matures, more and more of the work is about day to day management of bug reports, localization, security, etc. 17 interviews were conducted to better understand how it is used and shape its roadmap.

https://forgejo.org/2024-04-monthly-update/

For a small fee, the law is optional.

4/ snip "For a few years, part of my job was to do outreach with high school English teachers. So I drove around all over my state visiting high schools & observing classes. The rich kid schools had tablets & chrome carts. The poor kid schools had textbooks so old they were falling apart.

The rich kid schools had happy, well-rested teachers. The poor kid schools had tired, stressed, overworked teachers.

The same thing happens in higher education.

Hedge fund managers & CEOs have captured the boards of trustees of most public universities. They're funneling all the money to the top, away from smaller satellite schools like mine & away from the arts in general. They're directing all the cash & resources to business schools & STEM programs at their flagships, and they're letting everyone else wither & die. They don't want normal people to get an education, not anymore. They want normal people to do undesirable jobs, at least until the right robot comes along."

Maybe it’s just time to say “fuck it” and #GPL all the things?

The #OpenSource movement was a response to corporate skittishness around using #FOSS, and it focused on very permissive licenses to make corporations feel more comfortable using it. Maybe that turned out to be the wrong approach. Maybe the #OSI helped create the problem.

If the OSI helped create it, #GitHub encouraged and exacerbated it.

This is part of the reason I couldn’t get to a good place (mentally) in order to do a _real_ “Saving Open Source” talk at #PHPTek:

From @geerlingguy: “2024 is the year corporate open source died”

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/corporate-open-source-dead

@alttexthalloffame My much older brother tells the story, from his childhood in the 1950s, of my mother driving the car through the countryside and narrating what she saw so that her blind (from diabetes) husband could enjoy the view. My brother would lie down on the back seat, close his eyes and see the world the way his father saw it.

I think of that every time there’s a request here to include ALT text descriptions on Mastodon. It’s such a small ask with such a huge upside.

Solar is now being installed faster than any technology in history | RenewEconomy https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-is-now-being-installed-faster-than-any-technology-in-history/ “In 2023, #solar PV and #wind comprised about 80% of global generation capacity additions (and 99% in Australia). This is compelling market-based evidence that solar PV and wind are the best options for new #ElectricityGeneration capacity. New solar capacity is being installed faster than anything else in history“ #RenewableEnergy