Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

#NHS #England gives key role in handling patient data to #US spy tech firm #Palantir | NHS | The Guardian

Nothing good will come of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/20/nhs-england-gives-key-role-in-handling-patient-data-to-us-spy-tech-firm-palantir

#UK #DataProtection #Privacy

World facing ‘hellish’ 3C of climate heating, UN warns before Cop28 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/world-facing-hellish-3c-of-climate-heating-un-warns-before-cop28 pointless expecting #cop28 to do anything about; they just want to dig for more oil...

My application needs to store a private key on disk. But an OS keychain may not be available, and the user may not be willing to set a master passphrase. What's the least worst way of doing this?

Currently I'm encrypting the key using Argon2id and a randomly chosen passphrase, and writing the passphrase (and salt and argon params) in plaintext in a different file. It's... not really a *solution*, but stands a slightly better chance at ensuring that if a user deletes the files, they're unrecoverable.

Is there a better technique? Maybe writing 10 MB of random to disk across several files of different sizes (OS may put them in different parts of the physical disk) and using that as the encryption secret. Would that be of *any* use?

Nothing to see here...

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-israeli-children-sing-we-will-annihilate-everyone-gaza

“Dictators can't do it alone. They need propagandists and torturers to implement their vile agenda

America needs to know about #MikeDavis, frontrunner for #Trump 47 AG, auditioning by calling for 'gulags' and 'kids in cages'

No wonder Team Trump is eyeing him as attorney general in 2025.”

If @willbunch wrote it, you should read it.© & I thread it. 1/…🧵

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/mike-davis-trump-attorney-general-20231119.html

@lightweight As an anarchist (of sorts), I agree with your diagnosis, even if I extend it beyond the scope of public corpos. What I am focused on, is imagining alternative ways to organize social effort, thus giving people other options, beyond false dichotomy of a sarariman vs freelancer/sole trader.

I speak from the perspective and experience of Poland, which, among several other countries, has been recently colonised by the capitalist civilisation. Together with appalling legacy of the previous regime, we live - socially speaking - on a scorched earth, where almost no realm can be found, beyond those of political or economic concentrated power.

One of such realms can be built around the commons - not just common resources, as the classic narrative goes, but also around common needs. This is the job for cooperatives of all shapes, sizes and colors. And the only obstacle is human mindset.

Now, there is a group of people who already rejected (or have been rejected by) capitalism. Dropouts, loosers, neuroatypicals, queers, punks, anarchists, have-nots and the marginalised. They are the test pilots for the solidarity economy, to prove and normalize it - before those relatively well-off (and much more scared of change) may start joining the trend.

On my minuscule scale I am now building a proof-of-concept of such initiative here. If anybody is willing to talk about this approach, I will be happy to participate.


Why and for whom this Artel exists ?

#SocialMedia #Democracy #OnlineCommunities: "When was the last time you participated in an election for a Facebook group or sat on a jury for a dispute in a subreddit? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “benevolent dictators for life.” In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities’ democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before."
https://nathanschneider.info/books/governable-spaces/

"The German government has launched a new Open Source software project called openDesk, which aims to reduce the country’s dependency on proprietary software vendors and support transparency and interoperability.

openDesk is a collection of Open Source software modules that are important for day-to-day work in the public sector, such as text creation, file collaboration, project management, email, calendar and messaging."https://opensource.net/governments-adopt-open-source-sovereignty/

I mean, it's just a plagiarism algorithm, so of course it's going to be able to plagiarize the bs too. Instead of "AIs" we should start referring to them as PGs - Plagiarism Generators - or some such, because that's what they actually are. I feel like if we used a proper name for these chatbots, people would be a lot less confused about what's going on here.

[ChatGPT Quickly Authored 100 Blogs Full of Healthcare Disinformation]
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/107329

Featuring sustainable and recycled finds for November like these beautiful earrings made from reclaimed silver by Tulip Tree Designs.
Shop the "actually handmade" collection on our Pinterest Board:
https://www.pinterest.com/coopartisans/handmade-reused-upcycled-recycled-sustainable/

"Swedish workers are uniting against #Tesla. From tomorrow, cleaners will stop cleaning Tesla showrooms, electricians won’t fix the company’s charging points, and dockworkers will refuse to unload Tesla cargo at all Swedish ports. What started as a strike by Tesla mechanics is spreading, in something Swedish unions describe as an existential battle...The standoff in #Sweden is the biggest union action the company has faced anywhere in the world"

#news #twitter #musk

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-tesla-strike-cleaners

Let's all support the REI union, which is suing the "coop" owners for violations of labor law.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/rei-accused-widespread-labor-law-violations-unionized-us-stores-2023-11-15/

The union wants publicity about this for now.

#union #retail #uspol #labor #lawfedi #lawsuit #nyc #stores

A fully switched to Firefox a few months ago when Google kept on pushing their "Manifest V3" Chrome policy, now that they continue to push it and remove V2 (and with it meaningful adblockers) from Chrome in 2024 maybe you want to start migrating as well?

https://developer.chrome.com/en/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

Don't go to Brave btw. It's a shit company that keeps doing shady stuff and is run by a homophobe. There are so many browsers, just pick one. (Whether other Chromium-based browsers will keep an interface for effective customization for users around is for you to research. Just use Firefox TBH).

The NY Times' chronic timidity in calling things what they are is visible in its story on Musk's latest boosting of extremism. The news org says he has "faced increasing criticism that he has tolerated and even encouraged antisemitic abuse on his social media platform."

Remove the "faced increasing criticism that" part of that sentence, and it's what the Times should have reported. He's a bigot and he promotes bigots and extremism, period.

LibreOffice is free (as in freedom) software. And our friends at the @fsfe just handed over an Open Letter “The right to install any software on any device" to the German parliament, to support sustainability and freedom in electronic products: https://fsfe.org/news/2023/news-20231115-01.en.html

@dangillmor Not just old people...disabled people of any age who are on SSDI/SSI and eligible for Medicare.

United Healthcare's "AI" plainly does what the bosses want: It denies health care to elderly people who were conned into signing up for Medicare "Advantage" -- a program that is only good for rapacious corporations and often a disaster for the human beings these companies claim to serve.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Great piece of writing.

"Data centers powering AI consume water both for electricity generation and on-site cooling. Before even accounting for actual water use, the mere evaporation of water by these data centers’ various processes consumes 0.18 billion cubic meters, more than the total annual water withdrawal of Liberia (a country of about 5 million people in West Africa)."

https://robertvanwey.substack.com/p/artificial-thirst