Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

US students arrested in #Gaza campus protests face academic and legal woes - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/30/us-campus-protests-gaza "As classes restart, many of the 3,000 students detained are navigating legal system and disciplinary proceedings" this is vindictive bullying, nothing else

Not even the Onion could have come up with something this absurd (though directly on point):

"Right-Wing Media Carries Out Emergency Investigation Into Kamala Harris’ McDonald’s Job"

https://www.jezebel.com/right-wing-media-carries-out-emergency-investigation-into-kamala-harris-mcdonalds-job

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5090895/teens-school-college-poll
"What’s concerning is that students say they feel much less engaged in school than they did just last year, compared to Gallup’s 2023 Gen Z survey."

The survey indicates a very large (up to 10%, depending on the metric used) increase in student disengagement in the U.S. between 2023 and 2024. That's a huge change, and very recent.

Pat answers about problems with education that go back decades or short term changes due to lockdowns will not explain this.

Kendra Allenby, https://www.kendraallenby.com/

And it's exactly as I expected, bots and low effort accounts that post "content"

Anyone interested in staring at the night sky ? I think I'll make a session tonight.

#hackmas2024 #hackmas

Went to https://molten.org.nz this arvo hoping to buy a recycled case, powersupply, and basic graphics card (expecting to pay about $100-$150 for those three) so I could then drop ~ $2-300 for an Aliexpress X99 (Intel Xeon CPU) + motherboard + RAM kit (e.g. 32 GB RAM). I came home with a recycled HP workstation, with a high-end AMD graphics card, 16GB RAM (expandable to 256, 8 slots!), a Xeon processor (in a suitable Motherboard) tested & running (Mint USB) for $130. Wow.

In my recent experience ringing businesses & organisations in the US these days, *no one* picks up their phone. It all goes to answerphone. I seldom get call backs (suspect most USians can't work out international calling). Left wondering why people bother having phones there.

It looks like Purism finally got around to deleting my WordPress account, which unfortunately means the years of articles I wrote there no longer list my byline. It's a shame. I admit I'm pretty proud of some of those articles. End of an era I guess...

Due to the way the site is generated, the static copy of my WordPress author page still provides some sort of index to the articles I wrote for those of you who are interested.

https://puri.sm/posts/author/kyle-rankin/

@civillibertynz opposes the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill as an unwarranted intrusion on our civil liberties.

The bill allows search and detention without reason. The roadside tests used only show the presence of a drug and those tests are not reliable.

We do not have the technology to meet the standards of evidence in the principal act. Rather than accepting that, this act seeks to lower our standards for justice to match the available technology.

https://nzccl.org.nz/submission-land-transport-drug-driving-amendment-bill/

@stevesilberman wrote this: "When I die, please don't say that I've crossed over into the spirit realm, gone to the Other Side, moved on to a better place, rejoined my ancestors, or any other of those comforting fables. Just selfishly or selflessly use my own impermanence to WAKE UP to your own."

Librem 5: The smartphone that truly respects your freedom. Built for privacy, security, and control. #Purism #Librem5
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

How Exxon chases billions in US subsidies for a ‘climate solution’ that helps it drill more oil - https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/29/exxon-mobil-carbon-capture-government-subsidies "Climate experts raise red flags as oil giant spends millions lobbying while touting ‘underperforming’ carbon capture" #exxon is pure evil

If there are going to be climate-justified subsidies for owning electric cars, there should be subsidies for not owning cars at all.

#Forgejo v8.0.2 and v7.0.8 were just released! They are security releases.

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

Obviously never actually used any modern Linux distro 🙃
ChannelLife New Zealand: New Zealand firm unveils eco-friendly OS for older computers
https://channellife.co.nz/story/new-zealand-firm-unveils-eco-friendly-os-for-older-computers

This is very cool to see this from #GNURadio... a case study of a sensible (principled - for all the right reasons) move from Slack to Matrix: https://www.gnuradio.org/news/2020-04-27-moving-to-the-matrix/ And it happened 4 years ago...

I just contemplated for a minute how awesome it is that @Codeberg exists. I was reformatting the link to codeberg on my (these days empty-ish) github profile and it felt like the most normal thing that most of my repositories now live on an independent, community-led platform ... but it's totally not!

Some people set out to make it happen and put in so much energy and personal time and resources, and they made it happen! And still every day there's a few incredibly dedicated core volunteers behind the scenes, keeping things running for us all, and hundreds of members providing funds and oversight, and devs building forgejo and so on ... what a marvel of the free software movement. Also love the political energy behind it and that people are mostly very clear on the mission: Tech is political. Code is political. And we better make damn sure we make it good politics!! (•̀ᴗ•́)و

Is it just me, or when you hear someone talk about something being 'impactful', do you think... what happened to excellent words like 'important', 'vital', or 'profound', among many others? To me that word is vacuous corporate/government-speak. Yuck.