Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@lightweight @Godfrey642 @sinky @aral Thanks, Dave. It looks dire at Microsoft and the Bing proxies (Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, Qwant, Yahoo, etc.). This was one test I ran: https://jackyan.com/blog/2022/08/mojeek-shows-more-in-its-search-results-than-google/

Also, c. 40 per cent of Bing results are repeated from page to page. From what I can tell, the index is smaller than what Alltheweb and Inktomi had 20 years ago.

The only Google alternative for me is @Mojeek. Its rankings could improve but that can happen with a larger user base. Strictly no tracking.

As you know, we are currently dealing with #malware waves. This makes us mad. Mostly mad at #blocklist providers, which are mostly either not well maintainers, or selling a commercial product, where you are even asked to pay for delisted.

This is far from allowing for a free and decentralized Internet.

Read what we think about this: https://blog.codeberg.org/how-blocklists-prevent-the-internet-to-be-decentralized-and-safe.html

#Infosec #PiHole #eblocker #spamhaus #abuse #centralization

This is actually a productive question and I'm glad you asked. Most of the "feeling" of whiteness comes about when non-white users are policed in their use of the platform by white users who try to impose their own norms of use onto these users without reference for the cultural contexts of their use.

That's a lot of the word "use" there, so I'll try to be clearer with a fediverse specific example.

https://noc.social/@fredmarkle/109585606613963828

I don't think this is getting the coverage it needs. Scottish government to require passivhaus standard for all new build homes. This is big. Really big. Growing out of lessons from the 70's oil crisis. Passivhaus buildings use very little energy to heat, or to cool. We've known how to do this for decades. It's gross negligence from all western governments that the same is not true of all new builds in the developed world.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23197204.government-announces-passivhaus-standards-adopted-scotland/

The willingness most people seem to have to put their trust into (and even idolise/fawn over) corporations shows a lack of insight into the way proprietary technology, corporations, and society work. It's a diabolical mix that's going to be our downfall. For more see https://davelane.nz/megacorps & https://davelane.nz/proprietary

It's why I say we're in a digital Dark Age - most of society, despite being increasingly dependent upon it, lacks this crucial tech literacy. https://davelane.nz/darkage

I think it’s important to repeat: you don't "have something to hide" when you put blinds on your windows or close the door when you're on the can or wear clothes.

Privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's not about keeping secrets. It's about you being the person who chooses what you reveal about yourself, and when, and to who, and the other word we have for that is "dignity". Your inherent dignity, as a human being.

Your privacy is the agency you have over your dignity.

Also, a PSA for those in the disaster area in #Buffalo and surrounding areas:

If you see someone #looting, no you didn't.

And stop taking pictures of people.

#KillTheCopInYourHead

Back at Penn Station, with the waiting room covered in marble and NO seating whatsoever. Because God forbid if homeless people get some ideas.

The lack of public seating, places to pee, this is also #housingcrisis.

@tusk81

Looks like The Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network took three busloads of people to a church, to help provide them with necessary resources and welcome them to the country.

"Some migrants could be seen wearing only sweatshirts, with one man even wearing shorts as temperatures dipped in the teens Saturday night."

(via: https://twitter.com/SanctuaryDMV/status/1606881908029259778?s=20)

Here is their amazon wish list:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/JKOQCULD9O7M

CNN is reporting that two busloads of migrants, including children, were dumped in front of Vice President Harris’ residence tonight. During this freezing cold weather.

Texas’ Greg Abbott has been doing this for some time as a political stunt, but it’s not yet confirmed who is behind tonight’s busing, happening on Christmas Eve.

Like DACA recipient Astrid Silva tweeted, evil doesn’t rest.

@lightweight @abartlet Yes, there's a messy mixed message in that article around what is meant by "free software". I get that lack of national leadership and standards, plus insufficient budgets, have pushed many NZ schools into using "free" software built by big global advertising companies. That's quite different from the robust free #FOSS options that could be used (with the right national standards and training).

Recently the Weirder.earth admin team announced their plans to defederate from Kolektiva.social over perceived anti-Black racism: https://kolektiva.social/@WeirderAdmin@weirder.earth/109535767059967073 A member of our moderation team responded to that public statement here: https://kolektiva.social/@moderation/109536518877693458

We have drafted this statement in direct reply to weirder.earth's original DMs to us, and to also address concerned users on kolektiva.social and elsewhere. This statement is not intended to convince weirder.earth's admins to change their minds. It is clear that we have different views on the role of moderation on the fediverse, and different expectations when it comes to federation. We respect their decision to choose who to federate with, and wish them no ill will. Instead, we're looking to clarify a few things, give a brief update, and to provide some transparency for those who are confused about what happened, upset with the decisions and/or actions taken by our mod team, or who otherwise found our initial statement inadequate. We realize that it is a very long message, and we apologize for that, but because we take anti-racism seriously, and have received messages from Kolektiva users and other admins who have expressed concern about this issue, we wanted to give this matter the attention it deserves. To make it slightly easier to follow, we've broken it up into three posts.

First of all, we recognize that anti-Black racism is a serious problem on the fediverse, and that it takes many forms, ranging from micro-agressions to full-throated white nationalist bigotry. While we do not claim to be experts, or to always make the right call in specific situations, we are anarchists who recognize the central role that white supremacy plays in shaping power dynamics, both in the societies we live in, and in the online spaces we share. Our moderation team has silenced and/or suspended the accounts of many perpetrators of anti-Black racism in the past, on our own instance and on others, and will continue to do so moving forward. That said, as a general rule we do not defederate from entire instances based the actions of individual users, unless we feel that it is part of a pattern of behaviour that is tolerated or encouraged on the instance in question, and/or we feel that remaining federated with a given instance will place our users at undue risk. Our views on this are outlined in our /about section, under the headings "Safety and Danger in the Fediverse", "Defederating from Other Instances" and "A Note on Decentralization". 

Second, we want to emphasize that the anti-Black racism in question does not stem from posts directly involving Kolektiva users. What is at issue here are posts and affiliations of users on third-party servers, and our choice as to whether or not to remain federated with those instances. We are highlighting this distinction not to dodge accountability for our own actions, or to minimize the underlying allegations of anti-Black racism themselves, but because we have seen posts circulating that claim Kolektiva is giving racists/abusive behaviour a home on our server, which is not accurate.

Given the posts cited by weirder.earth's admins, and our own research and assessment of the admin of akko.disqordia.space's past behaviour, we’ve decided to silence her account. This means that moving forward, her posts will not appear on the public timelines of Kolektiva.social users who do not follow her account. This user and two other disqordia mods have reached out to us to open channels of communication, and indicated that they were open to feedback, with the desire of maintaining relations between our respective users. We have provided them with some critical feedback, and some of our thoughts on how these sorts of issues can be avoided in the future. At this time, we maintain our decision to NOT defederate from either akko.disqordia.space, nor xenofem.me. We will continue to keep an eye on both instances, and may take further action in the future if we feel it is warranted.

Our policy on defederation is based on a desire to maintain open communication with as much of the fediverse as possible, while giving our users the autonomy to decide what content they want to see, and what users and instances they want to mute/block. We sincerely encourage our users to familiarize themselves with Mastodon's rather extensive content-filtering controls, if they have not already done so. We also encourage our users to seek out instances better suited to their needs and desires on the fediverse, or to create their own, if they feel that Kolektiva is not a good fit, and/or they are looking for a more heavily-moderated instance. We do not say this to provide an ultimatum, or to shut down debate on our moderation policies, but because we want to be clear that we see kolektiva.social's current role as a larger landing-pad instance for anarchists seeking to escape corporate social media platforms. We hope that our users, many of whom are new to Mastodon, will take advantage of our relatively open federation policy to learn more about the different options that the fediverse has to offer, and what they want to get out of it.

While we follow the #fediblock hashtag, and appreciate its utility in warning of danger and isolating toxic instances on the fediverse, we do not think it's the role of admins and moderators to try and convince other instances who they should and shouldn't federate with. Different instances have their own approaches to this question, and we should be able to respect one another's autonomy, provided that doing so does not impede on our own, or cause problems for the users on our respective servers.

With that said, we are happy to receive feedback or answer further questions, whether related to this specific issue, or our approach to moderation more generally. And we also encourage those who are interested in joining our moderation team to get in touch.

USA, Land of the Free!...no wait, I mean Land of the Paywalled Court Documents!

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/no-free-pacer-us-lawmakers-exclude-proposal-spending-bill-2022-12-20/

Free PACER is another one of those things that supposedly enjoy broad support in Congress, but for some reason just can't seem to get passed (kinda like sick days for rail workers). Strange, innit?

I laughed harder than I should have at this.

#union

Huh, so according to https://stadt-bremerhaven.de/microsoft-zieht-virtuelle-eu-datengrenzen-fuer-die-cloud-ab-januar-2023/ Microsoft is moving all its EU customers to new EU-based Microsoft cloud hosting to improve security and compliance with EU regulation... however, there's no mention of the US Patriot and Cloud act, by which Microsoft, as a US-registered corporation, is bound, meaning - as I understand it - that it can be compelled by the US government to provide any data *on any user, anywhere in the world* at their request. Sees to me MSFT services are unsecurable.

If you're still using LastPass - or any centralised proprietary password management service - you're personal security hygiene is living on borrowed time. Security and massive centralisation of valuable secrets is not a good solution. A better solution: run your own service with relatively little valuable information in it (i.e. just yours and tens or hundreds of others... rather than hundreds of millions of others). I run Vault/BitWarden (Server/UI) & it's superb: https://tech.oeru.org/setting-your-own-bitwarden-password-manager-and-vaultwarden-sync-server