Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Trump and his cult don't really know how to deal with demonstrations of courage in defiance of their malicious ways. Example:

https://newrepublic.com/post/190529/donald-trump-bishop-prayer-midnight-rant

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer on the @securedrop team at @freedomofpress.

SecureDrop is open source whistleblowing software. The project is at a critical inflection point as we get ready to build the next-gen version based on a modern cryptographic protocol.

100% remote, full-time, $110-$120K base salary with comprehensive benefits for US-based employees. (If you're not in the US, we can discuss consultancy models.)

Hmu for questions.

https://grnh.se/813b998c5us

#GetFediHired

Repurposing old government information posters for my own ends.

So you suddenly feel the need to "do something" about the fascism?

Step 1: Shut the fuck up. Don't get specific or even "vaguepost-y" / overly suggestive about your intention to do anything.

Step 2: Learn about security culture because you're more effective if you don't go to prison, and you need to not get caught before you do your thing.

An ordered reading list:

"What is Security Culture? A Guide to Staying Safe"
A short basic introduction to the topics of security culture. This is a good primer for all subsequent discussions.
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/what-is-security-culture-a-guide-to-staying-safe/

"Confidence. Courage. Connection. Trust."
The best current text on security culture, one that takes an approach that tries to balance openness against much of security's paranoia.
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/confidence-courage/

"Mobile Phone Security."
One of the fastest ways to get caught is with the snitch in your pocket. Learn how to be safe with your phone and why these steps are important.
https://opsec.riotmedicine.net/downloads#mobile-phone-security

"Why Misogynists Make Great Informants"
Like the title says, people's shitty behavior is indicative that you shouldn't organize with them. A large number of snitches, informants, and infiltrators are misogynistic or otherwise problematic. Don't ignore it!
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/misogynists-make-great-informants/

"Threat Modeling Fundamentals"
You need to be able to reason about threats you face and do more than just wear a mask. How/what you do requires concert though, and this is a guide on how to do that reasoning.
https://opsec.riotmedicine.net/downloads#threat-modeling-fundamentals

"PRISMA: Primer on Radical Information for Secure Militant Actions"
You want to do some shit? You want a specific guide on how you might do that shit? Read no further.
https://ntpfiles.noblogs.org/prisma-primer-on-radical-information-for-secure-militant-actions/

Want to read even more? Download (yes download) PDFs and get ready to get spicy.

https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/

https://www.notrace.how/resources/

May your winter days be filled with good books.

Remember, Donald Trump desperately wants to be in the news every single day. Every single day, there are going to be news stories about what terrible thing he just did or said. These things are meant to provoke outrage, and they will. The media delivers the message; they are his puppet. Clicks -> ads -> money.

Go for a walk. Build something. Call a friend. Volunteer. Spend time with people you actually like. Support local entertainment.

Avoid doomscrolling.

#uspol

having succeeded in purchasing positions of influence inside the White House, the billionaires and tech VCs have now set their sights back on Wikipedia

In the violin world when people ask questions like “how do I maintain motivation to keep practicing?” the answer is: habits are better than motivation. Instead of relying on motivation or inspiration to hit, you should make a plan, have a routine, build the habit of practicing day in day out. Politics are the same. When folks ask "how do we get people to care?" the answer is: culture and ideology are better than individual feelings. Instead of hoping people feel moved to act on a specific topic we need to build norms, and yes, habits.

Part of the power of unions is inculcating that culture and identity of “we are union people, which means we show up in solidarity when shit goes down.” Part of the power of anarchism is that you have a ready ideological framework for understanding power and don't have to reanalyze every new situation from scratch. You know what side you're on. You know what to do. You’ve practiced this with your friends.

In the link/reshare below, @Scott M. Stolz mentions having to ban users from some U.S. states based on age verification laws and the (IMO appropriate) lack of such technology for Hubzilla and other fedi platforms.  I find this quite alarming and am interested to hear other perspectives on how fedi admins are handling increasingly messy international laws on age restrictions and related issues.

(boosts welcome)

#^https://loves.tech/display/b8a8cddc-9649-4f5b-bd04-1de79f93f597
Scott M. Stolz wrote the following post Wed, 22 Jan 2025 12:52:54 +0100 @Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝

No Fediverse service offers that as it should be (except for reporting, which we hopefully will have soon). This would mean the complete end of Fediverse in the UK if it is really meant seriously.

I am already having to ban users from several U.S. states because of their age verification laws. So I am pretty sure we have to ban U.K. users too.

https://forums.cafe/page/community/rules said:

If your local law requires us to get parental consent for you to participate because you are under a certain age, you are not allowed to participate on this server. If your local law requires us to collect personally identifying information, such as your birthday, or requires us to verify your age, you are not allowed to participate in this server.

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝ wrote the following post Wed, 22 Jan 2025 11:43:54 +0100 @Scott M. Stolz

Hubzilla does not have approved age assurance methods, files scanning for CSAM, or the ability to report posts by users, (and perhaps other things required under the law), and is, therefore, not compliant for a U.K. audience unless you run your own server as mentioned in #1 above.

No Fediverse service offers that as it should be (except for reporting, which we hopefully will have soon). This would mean the complete end of Fediverse in the UK if it is really meant seriously.

@Jupiter Rowland

That is, it could be some leftover residue from the app having been removed from the repository ages ago.

I don't remember this functionality. But it may well be that it existed at some point.

Congratulations to the ACLU, EFF and everyone else involved in this significant win for the Fourth Amendment.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-rules-warrantless-section-702-searches-violated-the-fourth-amendment

The #GOP’s stunning response to #Trump pardoning those who assaulted police - https://wapo.st/4g6A2Vt #republicans are such spineless cowards

Should you be wondering why @LWN #LWN is occasionally sluggish... since the new year, the DDOS onslaughts from AI-scraper bots has picked up considerably. Only a small fraction of our traffic is serving actual human readers at this point. At times, some bot decides to hit us from hundreds of IP addresses at once, clogging the works. They don't identify themselves as bots, and robots.txt is the only thing they *don't* read off the site.

This is beyond unsustainable. We are going to have to put time into deploying some sort of active defenses just to keep the site online. I think I'd even rather be writing about accounting systems than dealing with this crap. And it's not just us, of course; this behavior is going to wreck the net even more than it's already wrecked.

Happy new year :)

#Trump administration fires members of cybersecurity review board in “horribly shortsighted” decision - https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/trump-administration-fires-members-of-cybersecurity-review-board-in-horribly-shortsighted-decision/

On 1/22/2018, we lost Ursula K. Le Guin. She was more than a storyteller—she was a radical thinker who used her craft to critique capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, imagining alternative futures grounded in community, equality, and ecological harmony.

Explore titles at pmpress.org.

Got laid off today. If you're looking for someone who knows imaging, static analysis, and compiler design in depth and a wide variety of other things HMU. Resume is here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HgW40cu1UhIVYI6o2KjfrwnNrnGlbGXhmQDR5kLW4qU/edit?usp=drivesdk

You're watching activists from a Mexican sex workers union storming the judicial building in Mexico City this week, following the attempted murder of a trans woman. Cops just let the alleged perp go. This is how we defend our comrades. No justice. No peace.

A quote from Daniel K Gillmor that didn't make the final draft:

“The act of switching to an encrypted messenger is a social act, it is a community-oriented act, and it is a beneficial act.”

Build community, one encrypted message at a time.

Deleting #Facebook is intentionally difficult; those wanting to delete will find that they are led through a maze of menu options. This webpage has a link that will take you directly to the deletion page if you are logged into your Facebook book account on a PC. Perhaps the best thing you can do is post this link to your Facebook account a week before deleting it to help others learn about this fast and easy shortcut.

https://deletefacebook.com/

It's 2026 and you wonder what your friends are up to. You tell the app on your phone to go and get everyone's most recent news. Jim's phone takes a sec to load because his wifi is crap in the garden, and Alex's phone takes a sec to load because their wifi is crap in the workshop, but nobody times out.

You don't worry when your friends time out. You're not one of those Worrying People who panic when they open the app and their friend's phone fails to respond to the ping, you figure they're just, y'know, in the garden or going through a tunnel or something.

Jim is of course posting hole. You comment "Nice hole Jim," and that comment goes straight from your phone to Jim's. Your phone saves a copy as well because it deliberately doesn't know the difference between a four-paragraph furnace repair guide and "Nice hole Jim" and it makes a local backup of anything you type, in case Jim drops his phone down the hole and doesn't notice until he's planted a tree on top of it. Everyone still teases him about that, and he jokes along with them because it was pretty funny. The tree has its own account now.

You scroll through today's posts, mostly goodmornings and fantastical lies about all the stuff your friends are gonna get done today. All these posts were downloaded from people's phones when you opened the app a minute ago. You reach the end of today's posts (the first one of course was Jenna and her early-bird nonsense) and that's it, nothing more to see, you're up to date on what your friends are up to. You're not ready to go back to Actually Doing Something With Your Life so you move your thumb over the Yesterday button, but before you can tap, a mitherbox pops up to tell you that Alex is posting shaft.

Your thumbs do a happy dance and "Nice shaft Alex" is sent directly from your phone to theirs, without needing the permission of any weird billionaires sitting in between, a connection as direct as a phone call, not that you're thinking about that, you're thinking about Alex's shaft. Apparently they've been polishing their shaft all morning and they're almost ready to give it some lube and stick it in. That car's gonna be Gorgeous when they finally finish it.

Anyway that's it now, you're all caught up. You didn't see any ads (why would you? All this is stored on your friends' phones' SD cards and sent over their wifi, they're the ones paying the 0.0001p to respond to your phone's "What's new" request) and everything was shown in chronological order (there are alternative apps that mess with your timeline ordering but nobody uses those because they're shit) and you've read the whole day and you're done. You put your phone away and start getting dressed.

As your coffee brews you check your friends app again and Jen the birdwatcher wants to show everyone her tits

From the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker:

Freelance photojournalist Matthew Kaplan was arrested Saturday while covering a protest against mass deportations in Gary, Indiana.

He was charged with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and resisting law enforcement.

https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/freelance-photojournalist-arrested-at-anti-deportation-protest-in-indiana/