Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

BREAKING: A bunch of U.S. Digital Service employees (including me) were fired tonight. It's still unclear exactly how many. There is no visibility whatsoever into what determined who was let go. Legacy USDS (i.e., pre-DOGE) leadership was not involved in the decision about whom to let go and was not notified in advance that people were going to be fired.
#politics #USPol #DOGE #coup #USDS
1/2

What's the hottest thing a person can do on Valentines Day?

"The fact is that a dancing, foul-mouthed monkey at court was an amusement. I was like a court jester, paid to speak truth to power, which laughs at it. Pocket rebels like me were kept on the payroll (algorithmic or otherwise) to brand Empire as Free Speech© to outsiders. Like buying Marx on Amazon. They actually get paid off a certain amount of rebellion, but if it stops being profitable, they defenestrate you."

https://indi.ca/why-i-left-medium-they-defenestrated-me/

What are you doing with your morning? Here's an idea, in case you're looking for something.

https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-gov-website-2/

https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/trump-dei-fig-newton-black-air-force-general-20149856.php

Retired 4-star general denounces Trump's racism and says he doesn't recognize his country anymore.

Is #BlazingSaddles racist? Not at all – it shines a torch on a nation undergoing a serious identity crisis | #Film | The Guardian

One of my favourite films. When you realize that all the racist jokes about black people were written by the great #RichardPryor, you get a better idea of the context. #MelBrooks was courageous to make this film.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/14/blazing-saddles-western-racism-mel-brooks

#Racism #Attitudes

Scoop: The databases powering doge. gov are insecure, and people outside the government have already pushed their own updates to the site to prove it:

https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-gov-website-2/

Huh, I hear Anonymous might be engaging in some political action sometime soon. Could be interesting.

We have just fixed a connection issue resulting in degraded SSH access via IPv4. All services should be fully available now.

We overlooked a mistake in the firewall configuration of one host, because DNS propagation delay has resulted in our tests running against another server.

The Call For Speakers is open for HOPE_16!

We're looking for all kinds of interesting and diverse subject matter
pertaining to technology, hacking, privacy, and more. Speakers get free
admission to the conference and a chance to share ideas with a unique
and enthusiastic audience.

More details and tips can be found at https://www.hope.net/cfp-talks.html .
Ticket information for HOPE_16 is at https://www.hope.net/tickets.html .

HOPE_16
August 15-17, 2025
St. John's University
Queens, New York City
www.hope.net

Friday 2/14/ 2025, from 7- 8pm ET. Join a short discussion with tips on protecting our privacy.

Direct link to workshop chat:

https://communitybridge.com/privacyworkshop/

access code: privacytrust

Agenda 2/14/2025

7:00 - 7:10pm ET - Meet and Greet - Hello

7:10 - 7:45pm ET - Watch - a short video on Privacy and how to get started protecting it. Learn some things you can do in a few minutes!

7:45 - 8pm ET - Open discussion - Sign up for a 1-on-1 interview to assess your privacy needs.

Someone just pointed me at this excellent post by @jenniferplusplus about creating software commons' and I'm so very excited to see someone writing about this, Open Source folks should all go read this if you haven't already!

https://jenniferplusplus.com/the-free-software-commons/

#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

Giant insurance company wants website to take down quotes -- but the company's own CEO said this stuff in his praise for "AI"-authored claims correspondence:

https://futurism.com/allstate-demanding-delete-quotes-ai

If you're not already reading Futurism, I recommend you start.

So maddening that the rest of the White House press corps doesn't boycott all press briefings until The Associated Press is allowed back in the room.
https://journa.host/@w7voa/113999029954090091

The White House Correspondents' Association issued a sternly worded statement while it should be leading a boycott charge. Which is what I just told them using their contact form, for all the good I expect that to do.
https://whca.press/2025/02/11/statement-on-white-house-excluding-ap-from-news-coverage/

And hurray for AP in refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico anything but The Gulf of Mexico.

#uspol #journalism #GulfOfMexico

Just calling it... **checks watch** It's unilateral beer o'clock.

Ahhhh. Oh yeah. We're so spoilt for good beer in Aotearoa.

EdTech in NZ (and the rest of the world) could be *so* much better if there was informed & principled leadership.

The UK is telling its citizens “that it is willing to put their security at risk from all manner of bad actors like hackers and thieves because it cannot tolerate the ability to have a private conversation online,” EFF’s Andrew Crocker told @verge. https://www.theverge.com/policy/612136/uk-icloud-investigatory-powers-act-war-on-encryption

Codeberg: Spam and DoS attacks on non-commercial development platform

Masses of spam messages, overflowing email inboxes and clogged internet lines: Anonymous attacks plague the non-profit Github alternative.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Codeberg-Spam-and-DoS-attacks-on-non-commercial-development-platform-10281505.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Cybercrime #DoSSchwachstelle #Git #GitHub #OpenSource #Softwareentwicklung #Spam #news

"Plenty of experts have already stated the obvious — punishing journalists for not using words the government likes is an egregious violation of the First Amendment," Seth Stern tells The Washington Post.

"Trump’s team knows that."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/02/13/associated-press-gulf-of-america-media-access/