Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Apple’s AI helpfully rewords scam messages to make them look legitimate

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/01/09/apples-ai-helpfully-rewords-scam-messages-to-make-them-look-legitimate/

The hypocrisy of fiscal economics:

When there is a crisis in the real economy, we are told austerity is needed to restore confidence & encourage growth - the neo-classical economic solution.

When there is a crisis in the financial serves sectors we are told what is needed is liquidity & stimulus to restore confidence & encourage growth - a (narrow form of) Keynsian response.

So its not so much Keynes has been rejected, but rather its only applicable when the rich are in trouble!

#economics

Ever so often I find an old #qemu VM and when starting it I see:

$ virsh start myvm
error: Failed to start domain 'myvm'
error: unsupported configuration: Emulator '/usr/bin/kvm' does not support machine type 'pc-0.12'

(which happens since qemu removed the pc-0.12 machine type a while back)

Now one could fix the domain XML by hand by why not let a script do it? Turns out #Ubuntu shipped one but removed it already. It's still in their version control though: https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libvirt/tree/debian/libvirt-migrate-qemu-machinetype?h=applied/ubuntu/xenial

#libvirt

Hiring freeze at dozens of #NHS #cancer and diagnostic units despite rising referrals - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/10/hiring-freeze-nhs-cancer-diagnostic-units-rising-referrals exactly wrong

Democrats are doing what they do best: surrendering. https://newrepublic.com/article/190043/laken-riley-immigration-bill-trump-democrats-surrender

Under Meta's relaxed hate speech rules, users can now post "I'm a proud racist" or "Black people are more violent than whites." https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/

Sometimes when I talk to homeless people in the Bay Area, I ask them how they became homeless.

Sometimes, they say that they lost their homes in a wildfire.

More painful than seeing people lose their homes in a forest fire, is watching them lose their humanity, as our empathy for them evaporates.

https://www.redding.com/story/news/2019/06/11/annual-count-helps-identify-some-origins-homelessness/1409772001/

In the immediate days after someone loses their home in a wildfire, our talk is full of empathy.

But as days turn to weeks and months, we stop caring *why* someone doesn't have a home, and only care *that* they don't have a home.

We start planning to throw away their remaining possessions.

https://www.calhealthreport.org/2022/08/03/as-wildfires-grow-so-does-californias-housing-and-homelessness-crisis-here-are-some-solutions/

Homeless people aren't different people than us. They are us.

Many homeless people just experienced a sequence of unfortunate events that led them to this place.

"No! They're drug addicts! They did this to themselves!"🤡

Again, ask people with addiction how they became addicted.

They'll tell you

https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2023/05/17/san-francisco-city-attorney-announces-230-million-settlement-with-walgreens-after-victory-in-opioid-litigation/

There's a pervasive myth that people still believe about California homeless: that homeless people "come to California for the weather."

That's a lie that fortunate people 🙋🏿‍♂️ tell ourselves.

California homeless are almost all California residents (90%) who just had a bunch of bad luck in a row.

https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness

Anyway, I skipped the "burrito taxi" discourse, AKA the meal delivery discourse.

Because if tomorrow you lost your home and your job to wildfire, and only had your car and a few hastily gathered possessions, and you needed to earn some money?

Your car would become a burrito taxi too.

I don't care if you know how to cook food for yourself for cheap, or if you treat yourself by having burritos delivered to your house.

I care that we live in a country so cruel, that some people deliver food in the cars that they live in, while those receiving the food don't even know or care.

The bigger issue is that by focusing on the rules moderation becomes entirely oriented towards the individual. Moderation becomes the judging of individuals and their actions according to the rules to determine whether content can stay or must go. Not incidentally this is also what liberal, and especially libertarian, ideology gets wrong about how society works.

Because that’s not what moderation is at all. Moderation is about structuring a space to allow for the community you want. You don’t moderate for individuals, you moderate for the group. The reason for taking an action as moderator isn’t because someone is guilty of breaking the rules but because of how they are affecting the community. This is a fundamentally different guiding principle for moderation. (And also points to the limitations of so many online moderating tools that only focus on removal/limiting who can see what.)

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Big news: a recent copyleft lawsuit we funded and supported has concluded with a very positive result for user rights! The suit, brought by a device owner in Germany, resolved with the purchaser receiving the right to repair, modify, and reinstall LGPLed software on their devices. Check out the details at https://sfconservancy.org/news/2025/jan/09/avm-copyleft-lawsuit-resolved-with-install/

Wow. The US has apparently 'blacklisted' CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer... because they're Chinese-owned.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=mK9AIodJqSs or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK9AIodJqSs

#FootGun #DownwardSlide #EndOfEmpire

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"It’s doubtful that Carville, Klein, and Emanuel are capable of offering a sustained anti-Wall Street message. They are different from Bernie Sanders, and not just because of their word choices. It’s about their entire careers, the things that made them who they are, their entire way of being."

[Beware the Faux Populism of Corporate Democrats]
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/beware-the-faux-populism-of-corporate-democrats.html

Somehow we need to monetise this - and quickly

Steve #Bannon: #Musk’s money will help us make Europe a populist haven - https://www.politico.eu/article/us-steve-bannon-elon-musk-wealth-and-influence-are-weapons-to-advance-maga-aligned-goals-in-europe/ this is arguably the most serious threat to European democracy now, and I doubt leaders there understand the seriousness of the threat... #adtech

Need some reading material for the new year? Wikileaks has you covered.

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/

The Laken Riley Act, which House Republicans passed earlier this week and is now at a friendly Senate, would direct DHS to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who are charged with --- not but convicted of --- shoplifting.

I can't find any hearings that have been held on it. That's where you'd see legislators considering whether accusations of shoplifting should be the basis for deportation.

I hate to say it right now, but democracy depends on obedience. The question right now: Where does your obedience lie?

Just out in America Magazine: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2025/01/08/democracy-trump-inauguration-249630

Reminder for all software developers/engineers, given recent news regarding Meta (e.g. https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/113794462779776347): don't ever sign NDAs. They will *always* bite you in the ass eventually, and they're never worth it. They (the people wanting you to sign the NDAs) need you a lot more than you need them.

Journalists: Send us examples of your stories being censored (like this) by Meta in the last year, whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-censoring-404-media-stories-about-facebooks-censorship/

@Einer von Vielen I'm aware of it, but I would like something that would work regardless of what web app(s) the server is hosting. I know about some possible solutions that should block these requests early, but have not had time to test them properly yet.

However, I'm also thinking about a more adversarial response, where we could use these "AI" scraper bots' complete lack of respect for the sites they invade against them. What if we could serve them an alternative page/site with garbage that would poison their training data? Preferably something that's less resource demanding on the server than the actual web app.

Anyways just thinking out loud. Just blocking them is probably the easiest, but as they keep changing user agent strings and IP address ranges all the time, it'll be a game of whack-a-mole. I'd like something that does more damage.