Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Two simple way to reduce the likelihood of semiconductor storages *and* reduce the volume of e-waste we have to deal with.

1) Oblige vendors to guarantee N years of useful life for electronic goods, and advertise price-per-year of life alongside purchase price. This could reduce the wastage of semiconductors in disposable electronics, and help people avoid being ripped off by the designer landfill that's misleadingly marketed as being cheaper.

#PolicyNZ #semiconductors #EWaste #RightToRepair

"A fake version of the private messaging app Signal has found a way onto Google Play and appears to be linked to a Chinese spy operation, researchers claimed on Wednesday." https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/30/malicious-signal-app-planted-on-google-play-by-china-linked-cyber-spies/

Preach it, sister! ✊

https://daily.jstor.org/now-we-can-begin-annotated/

Interested in co-op solutions in retrofit and renewalable energy? Check out these upcoming webinars https://prestoncoopdevelopment.org/events/ #coops

I was the victim of an extremely clever card fraud/social engineering hack.

Well, partly a victim since I managed to stop it.

I was called by my bank, as they wanted to “verify some suspect transactions on my account”.

Then things got weird…

🧵

Yesterday was the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom...though you never seem to hear much about that first bit 🤔 Demands included a job guarantee, a right to housing, and a minimum wage.

https://theintercept.com/2023/08/28/march-on-washington-jobs/

Last chance to get radical education and parenting books for 40% off with coupon code Back2School until 9/1.

See them all at https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=42&sortby=num_sold:desc

Post by @lightweight asks if this is a digital dark age.

Yes! Think of all the learning possibilities that have just been ignored (cf. Kay, Engelbart...)

& Think of how corporate software leaves little decision-making space for users to craft it to their actual needs.

Post also encourages sharing whatever your own personal digital learning 'odyssey' [1] has taught you.

https://davelane.nz/current-digital-dark-age

[1] Word from my own work: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-020-00188-3

“You four have been iconic, but we’ve found a guy who can do it in half the time and at half the cost.”

#climate #cartoon

It doesn't always have to be big. You can just grab the opportunity to focus on one of your favorite tools that is open source and organize a workshop on this. Hackerspace TkkrLab in the Netherlands is doing just that. Way to go there! https://tkkrlab.nl/cybersaturdays/2023_09_16_kicad/

Looking at this: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/496826/government-unveils-digital-services-tax-aimed-at-multinationals I note that Microsoft, who also don't pay anywhere *near* enough taxes in NZ, tend to get left off the list. That's a big oversight, and gives people the impression that they're 'good guys'. Wonder why they don't get a mention? 🤔

If any of you are involved in running a library, and you're not already aware of #Koha, I strongly suggest you look into it: https://koha-community.org/ It's the world leading #ILMS, and it's also #LibreSoftware. It has a great back story & was started by (& subsequently led) by NZers.

What this report shows is:
1 Company profit is the major driver of inflation.
2 Wages aren't coming close to keeping up.
3 Govt spending is NOT a major driver of inflation.

National told us it was ALL Govt spending.

#nzpol #NatLies #VoteGreensNZ

Wow, just got asked to take part in an academic research project on privacy policies in the Fediverse. In order to do so - and waive my privacy - I'm asked to fill in a Google Forms. 🤦

There's something painfully naïve about this.

LinkedIn censors posts without telling people:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/linkedin-silently-deleted-several-of-my-posts/

It occurs to me that my main purpose for advocacy of #LibreSoftware/#FOSS is to *shift the Overton window* in industry and public perception of digital technology - especially that which is proprietary to #BigTech corporations as opposed to that created by communities and institutions for the Common Good. I thank all of you who extend the reach (by boosting) of my advocacy posts.

Notes to the folks who are scared that Trump's trial(s) will lead to violence by the white supremacists:

The white supremacists want you to be scared, and the white supremacists have already been violent on Trump's behalf.

Fuck the white supremacists. Fuck being scared.

#uspol

Sorry, can't talk right now

Busy explaining that low-wage workers are only called "unskilled" to normalize the existence of poverty wages, obscuring the fact that billion dollar companies often barely pay their "skilled" workers a living wage either.

We all deserve more

#BigPharma doesn't generally create cures, because they're not as profitable as ongoing 'treatments' & 'therapies' allowing them to sell us something for the rest of our prolonged but slightly miserable lives. Similarly, IT security vendors don't tell you the key thing you can do to protect yourself digitally. They want to sell you anti-virus & 'enterprise intrusion detection systems', etc. But they'll never say: you would vastly reduce your risk & costs by *not using MS Windows*.