Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

How are the campaigns spending the final stretch? https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/10/18/campaign-closers/

**Time-sensitive**: There's a critical need for poll observers in Georgia for the upcoming U.S. election.

Today (Oct 25, 2024) from 5:30pm to 7pm ET, Swing Blue Alliance is hosting a phone bank to help recruit poll observers:
https://swingbluealliance.org/calendar/recruit-georgia-poll-observers-with-swing-blue-alliance-9/

Boosts very much appreciated.

Another editorial page resignation at LA Times --

'For her part, Klein wrote her decision to quit was made “simple and easy” by Soon-Shiong’s statement, in part because forcing the editorial board to conjure up positive things about Trump “works as well as any other lie designed to make him look like anything better than sludge.”'

https://www.thewrap.com/two-more-la-times-editorial-writers-quit-over-block-of-kamala-harris-endorsement-exclusive/?utm_source=www.status.news&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=turbulence-at-the-times

Introducing Sonusmix, an app to easily manage audio routing in Pipewire. It features virtual devices, volume control, routing, application endpoints to manage entire applications at once, persistence, and some tools to work around some of Pipewire's issues. It's available as an AppImage, Flatpak, or Nix package. Feedback is highly appreciated, we have a Matrix channel too! Please let us know if you have any issues!

https://codeberg.org/sonusmix/sonusmix

#linux #pipewire #audio #opensource #codeberg #rust

We're learning more about the serious threat that Musk poses to U.S. national security.

He's completely wired into America's security apparatus, and has been one of Putin's phone pals.

Democrats need to recognize that much of this got going under Obama, whose administration was simply reckless in trusting this guy.

Great reporting by the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/musk-putin-secret-conversations-37e1c187?st=GPGB3J&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Reminder: no employer that forces you to compromise your ethics and aesthetics by requiring you to run MS Windows is worthy of your talents.

If you need that job, then stick with it, but know that you have every right to feel aggrieved and unvalued (and to question both the competence and motives of those making decisions in the business), and that you should feel justified in jumping ship for a better opportunity that respects your intelligence & agency at the first opportunity.

Given that Microsoft owns VSCode, Github, NPM and basically Typescript I do really not feel comfortable building using any of those.

Network effects of colonization. As companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Google steal our indigenous languages and sell them as a service, many more for profit colonial organizations will use those services to sell back to us. Eg Riverside using OpenAI and now "works in te reo Māori." Microsoft essentially buying OpenAI concentrates more wealth and enshrines profits from colonialism. The best part is how first they tried to kill our languages. Indigenous saved them so colonizers can profit.

This is why I have been trying to warn about BlueSky.

BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

Their new board member is a bitcoin researcher who promotes NFTs.

BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says that the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation".

(via @jwz)

Update on our Code of Conduct policy:

Following extensive internal and external discussions, we have decided to update the Kolektiva.social code of conduct. While there will be additional changes coming in the near future, there are two that we will be adopting effective immediately. In this post, we will discuss our rationale for these changes, and how they will affect our moderation practices. The obvious context and impetus for the changes is the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the increasingly brutal Israeli military campaigns being waged in the West Bank and Lebanon.

The TLDR; version:

1) We are removing the section of our Code of Conduct that specifically prohibits Analogizing Israel and Nazi Germany.

&

2) We will be taking a more active role in removing posts that uncritically celebrate the Al Aqsa Flood attack of October 7 2023, and/or glorify militarized, authoritarian actors in the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Syrian and Iranian states.

We’ll go over both of these points individually, but first we want to acknowledge that there are users who will take issue with these decisions for different and mutually-conflicting reasons. While we regret this, we also see it as inevitable. We welcome feedback, discussion and constructive criticism.

The Kolektiva mod team is made up of individuals with our own opinions and strongly held views. While we don’t always agree on everything 100%, we try to come to consensus whenever possible, and to be guided by our shared anarchist principles and values. Sometimes this process moves slowly, and requires numerous conversations, which has been the case here.

The past year has been utterly horrific. The scale and constant bombardment of ethno-nationalist and religious-sectarian violence, massacres and atrocities has ignited rage, hatred, and a thirst for vengeance in many people’s hearts. It has shattered many people’s illusions about shared human values, and added a new sense of urgency to discussions on the role and ethics of violence as it relates to revolutionary and anti-colonial struggle, tactics and strategy. While often difficult, we hope these discussions and debates continue, and that they produce new affinities and ultimately, more effective resistance against the forces that divide and subjugate us.

(1/3)

@GuerillaOntologist reading the full piece, it doesn’t sound like they are all that much reformed.

brought to you by...
https://archive.is/fM4pM

“We take it back,” Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, two of America’s most prominent health economists, declare in a new book, We’ve Got You Covered, their blueprint for reforming our health care system. After years of preaching “the gospel” that “patients must pay something for their care,” they’ve now abandoned the message.

Economists love to take the side of power when they actually have some influence (see Robert Reich's run as Labor Sec.) but then, when no longer in a position to actually effect anything, they repudiate their former positions and start making the arguments of people they had previously dismissed as naive or ignorant. They should not be allowed to so easily rehabilitate their academic reputations. These people are a scourge, and letting them off the hook so easy does us no favors.

“I appreciate you may be a sportsman, but I am unclear at this point what a grenade launcher has to do with that,” Judge William Cathon said.

Judge was speaking to right-winger allegedly behind all kinds of terrible stuff in Phoenix, Arizona.

https://www.azfamily.com/2024/10/23/man-behind-phoenix-area-political-threats-had-huge-stash-guns-ammo-police-say/

@agx https://flathub.org/apps/com.toolstack.Folio is also pretty neat for taking notes and managing them in separate topics.

I'll be tabling at the Georgian Bay FanCon this Saturday in Meaford, Ontario, so if you're in the area, come say what's up and get some comics.

I will add that I don't believe that there is anything inherent to liberalism here - this is simply how the liberal mindset has developed in the US, by and large. ALs could be a force for good, but to do that they would have to ally with Leftists, which they find impossible to do while also insisting on a blind obseisance to their party's leadership, which Leftists cannot abide. The problem is unaccountable political leadership, which ALs have proven unable (or unwilling) to remedy.

The truth about #copyright: even successful authors can’t live on the #royalties #publishers pay them - https://walledculture.org/the-truth-about-copyright-even-successful-authors-cant-live-on-the-royalties-publishers-pay-them/ it's tragic that most people still believe in this fairy tale put about by the copyright world

The American Liberal (AL) is someone who would sooner attack a Leftist for not supporting a Center-Right politician of their own party than make any attempt to pressure said politician into adopting more liberal policies. While AL voters insist everyone to their left must vote for their candidate, their candidates move continually rightward in order to grab more votes from the openly conservative party.The AL is, therefore, a force for reactionary and otherwise conservative politics.

I thought I understood the extent to which the broad availability of mobile location data has exacerbated countless privacy and security challenges. That is, until I was invited along with four other publications to be a virtual observer in a 2-weeek test run of Babel Street, a service that lets users draw a digital polygon around nearly any location on a map of the world, and view a time-lapse history of the mobile devices seen coming in and out of the area.

The issue isn't that there's some dodgy company offering this as a poorly-vetted service: It's that *anyone* willing to spend a little money can now build this capability themselves.

I'll be updating this story with links to reporting from other publications also invited, including 404 Media, Haaretz, NOTUS, and The New York Times. All of these stories will make clear that mobile location data is set to massively complicate several hot-button issues, from the tracking of suspected illegal immigrants or women seeking abortions, to harassing public servants who are already in the crosshairs over baseless conspiracy theories and increasingly hostile political rhetoric against government employees.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/10/the-global-surveillance-free-for-all-in-mobile-ad-data/