Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Since bogus certificates are in the news, I thought I'd dredge up some ancient history about bogus certificates:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1444523/verisign-issues-false-microsoft-digital-certificates.html

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2001/ms01-017

https://infosec.exchange/@dangoodin/115148579131287213

Trump and his apparatchiks have a new rule: If they merely accuse you of being bad, they can order the military to murder you -- with impunity, as long as their criminal regime remains in power.

Coming soon to America's streets and homes if we don't stop them somehow.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/04/trumps-killing-alleged-venezuelan-drug-traffickers

That dashboard camera you bought for your car is a spying on you and your movements -- and you have zero control over where the images go.

Congress -- which could do something about this -- is fine with the situation, because it has endless contempt for your privacy.

https://www.404media.co/this-company-turns-dashcams-into-virtual-cctv-cameras-then-hackers-got-in/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

FPF filed a FOIA request to find out if the Trump administration had a legal rationale for killing 11 people in an attack on a Venezuelan boat.

Our fight, even if successful, will take months.

It shouldn’t be this hard to find out 1) what the government believes the law is, and 2) how it intends to apply it.

https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/administration-kills-11-provides-no-legal-rationale/

You really cannot clean your way out of cows being poopy. They're perpetual poop machines.

As soon as you're done cleaning them... they've already pooped on themselves again.

Did a lil raw milk Q&A.

"But they use raw milk in Europe and it's fine! Because they're clean artisanal dairies, not the factory farms we have here!"

Nah... Europe still has outbreaks from raw milk *all the time.* At least two big ones in the last year alone.

https://youtu.be/_nt98kxOjaE

"For decades, the phrase “Year of the Linux Desktop” has been tossed around like a tech industry punchline. But now, it’s no longer a meme—it’s a movement.

This isn’t just about numbers—it’s about momentum. GNU/Linux’s desktop share hovered below 2% for years. But since 2020, it’s been climbing fast.

From the lens of @purism this shift is more than market share—it’s a cultural awakening."

https://puri.sm/posts/the-quiet-revolution-gnu-linux-crosses-6-desktop-market-share-and-its-just-the-beginning/

#GNULinux #Linux #marketshare #yearofthelinuxdesktop #privacy #freedom #desktop

"The unsettling feeling that your device is spying on you is real — but the culprit isn't a secret microphone. It's the data broker industry," EFF’s @evacide tells CNET. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/features/no-your-iphone-isnt-listening-to-you-heres-whats-really-happening/

How tf do people who came to the US *legally* to pick crops, wind up getting enslaved?

https://youtube.com/shorts/WliZZD1NvhA

Sources: https://prismreports.org/2023/04/14/h2a-visa-wage-theft-exploitation/

https://www.palabranahj.org/archive/caught-in-the-fields-the-h-2a-visa-workers-who-feed-america-and-the-system-that-traps-them

https://nwjustice.org/article/1965

https://westfaironline.com/courts/mexican-cartel-invoked-in-alleged-threats-to-putnam-h-2a-visa-workers/

Wow. This ripples far. https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-tax-code-trump-section-174-microsoft-meta-1851783502

so the founder of the federated blogging platform Ghost is one of the AI bros that’s tricked themselves into thinking the slop machine makes them 10x more productive in spite of all evidence to the contrary

if your site’s built on Ghost, it might be worth checking how much of the code you’re relying on is slopcoded https://john.onolan.org/.ghost/activitypub/note/751e39e3-365e-4398-830b-7cdf7ceb2882

edit: since Ghost links don’t seem to work properly, it’s John’s post in this thread https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115142592402628516

* Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-data-reveals-the-hidden-productivity-tax-of-almost-right-ai-code

If they can no longer use Alligator Auschwitz as a concentration camp, maybe they can use it for the iron lung facility after polio returns to Florida.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/03/florida-vaccine-mandate

Trump regime apparatchiks and goons are engaged in an unprecedented, massive crime wave. It spans the entire nation, though its epicenter is in Washington.

Why are Democrats not loudly warning that these people could someday be held to account for their crimes?

Looks like I got it wrong re Google antitrust decision and Mozilla. See this post: https://spyglass.org/google-apple-and-mozilla-win-in-the-antitrust-case-google-lost/

Good grief; I knew Audible/Amazon were predatory but I’m surprised this is legal.

Short version - if an author isn’t exclusive to Audible, then Audible will do their best to take the author’s royalties and give them to people who are exclusive.

Exclusive including “not available in libraries”.

https://youtu.be/1ur9398YdrA

@pluralistic

just wow. read this, from Techdirt:

Wired, Business Insider Editors Duped By Completely Bogus ‘AI’ Using ‘Journalist’ Who Made Up Towns, People That Don’t Exist

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/02/wired-business-insider-editors-duped-by-completely-bogus-ai-using-journalist-who-made-up-towns-people-that-dont-exist/

Here's Wired's mea culpa:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-wired-got-rolled-by-an-ai-freelancer/

Techdirt's Karl Bode correctly concludes: "This country has taken an absolute hatchet to quality journalism, which in turn has done irreparable harm to any effort to reach reality-based consensus or have an informed electorate. The rushed integration of “AI,” usually by media owners who largely only see it as a way to cut corners and undermine labor, certainly isn’t helping. Add in the twisted financial incentives of an ad-based engagement infotainment economy, and you get exactly the sort of journalistic outcomes academics long predicted."

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.

In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.

In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of "care" which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.

But I did it "by the book"

As I did it "by the book", the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.

In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, "by the book", and it was.

In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, "by the book", the government promised that it would treat me as such.

Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.

The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the "mistake" it had originally made when it recorded me as male, "by the book".

In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done "by the book", because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.

In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, "by the book". Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, "by the book".

In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because "opposite sex" civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.

And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.

The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.

And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.

Apparently this is "all my fault" and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.

Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?