Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Anti-monarchists in the #NorthWest are going to be apoplectic at what the Guardian has uncovered...

The Duchy of Lancaster has been profiting from funds collected from those who die without a will or next of kin.... running at about £6m a year for the last decade.

I know a lot of people who will be getting ready to get really mad about this (and rightly so).

Get that will sorted, is the best advice to anti-Royalists!

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/23/revealed-king-charles-secretly-profiting-from-the-assets-of-dead-citizens

@cogdog in my days of providing IT support for people unlucky enough to be using MS products, I was frequently asked to help save corrupted MS Office files. MSO is surprisingly fragile. LibreOffice's code for opening Microsoft's proprietary formats is demonstrably better than MS'. Many 'irretrievable' MS files've been saved by LO despite MS trying to hobble it for most of its existence (because it's excellent). Users should take note. Incidentally LO came from StarOffice which predates MSO.

The Murdoch family's Fox "News" did its best to foment national fear and loathing with its dangerously bogus claim that the car explosion at Niagara Falls was terrorism.

It's a reminder that Murdoch and his underlings relentlessly inject poison into our civic bloodstream, for profit and power.

If you subscribe to cable/satellite TV or a digital equivalent, you are sending them money every month.

Please stop. Please cancel. Do not support this evil company.

Sometimes, despite it being unpopular with the bonfire proprietors, all of us have to be bonfire pissers. Because some bonfires are just a really bad idea.

No Thanks No Giving on stolen land.

Art by @KleeBenally (on IG) of Indigenous Action.

Learn more and support at indigenousaction.org & donate to Indigenous Mutual Aid at indigenousmutualaid.org and Kinłani Mutual Aid kinlanimutualaid.org.

subMedia presents:
The Two Decades of subVersion Riot Porn Jamboree

Join the subMedia crew this December as we celebrate two decades cranking out anarchist propaganda. That's right, subMedia has finally made it through its angsty teenager years. Before you know it, we'll be setting riot porn to soft jazz! So before that happens and to mark this auspicious milestone, we're throwing a series of screening events in select cities. A riot porn jamboree, if you will - culminating in a livestream screening party, where current and former crew members will be on hand to introduce some of our favourite videos, shoot the shit, and answer all your most burning questions.

So grab some popcorn, a crowbar and a gasmask to celebrate the way only subMedia can... with a two hour cavalcade of riot porn, direct from our projector to your eyeballs.

::TOUR DATES::

Dec 2 - Bloomington
Dec 14 - Baltimore
Dec 14 - Belo Horizonte
Dec 15 - Porto Alegre
Dec 15 - Philly
Dec 15 - Montreal
Dec 16 - NYC
Dec 18 - Hamilton
Dec 19 - Toronto
Dec 21 - Online Livestream

Check our social media, or reach out for more details about local events.

The NY Post is part of the Murdoch family's media empire.

Media Matters has been one of the few organizations that has consistently called out the Murdochs' poisonous influence in our culture.

So it is no surprise that the Post -- which doesn't disclose this context -- is doing a hit piece on Media Matters.

Gonna re-signal boost that we're looking for folks to help out with (at least) #Go hacking on #Abra!

https://docs.coopcloud.tech/abra/

#Abra is used daily by actual real life tech co-ops such as @autonomic & https://local-it.org (fedi handle?) and loads more.

We have good collective process in place to submit proposals for compensation for the work.

The community is full with Very Nice People. It's free software and copyleft.

Happy to help on-board!

-- @decentral1se

Do I know anyone here who is willing to share their experience deploying an institutional Mastodon server? A contact of mine is looking for someone to discuss the experience as he works on getting a government agency to deploy their own instance. Boosts appreciated #fediverse #mastodon

I wrote a piece on a #Coop alternative to Etsy that just launched, one that puts power back into the hands of artists & makers:
@coopartisans (glad they're on Mastodon!)

I didn't realize the extent to which #Etsy had become toxic to sellers until starting interviews for this piece. It's clear that artisans are being drawn to this because an alternative is long overdue.

(there's a tech issue with the authorship at the top; it names me as the author at the bottom)

https://www.shareable.net/artisans-cooperative-an-etsy-alternative-owned-and-run-by-artists-and-makers/

And the winner of the Dutch election is... The Dutch Media. They've spent decades hyping up every right wing racist party, allowing them to say the most outrageous things without any fact checking at all. The public has now given the most votes to a racist linked to Putin. I'm ashamed.
#tk2023 #DutchPolitics

Debian Votes: A General Resolution torward an offical project statment has been initiated regarding the recent EU 'Cyber Resilience Act and Product Liability Directive' https://www.debian.org/vote/2023/vote_002

Although Dan Godin never says it directly in this article (as he should): https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/11/normally-targeting-ukraine-russian-state-hackers-spread-usb-worm-worldwide/ but this new USB worm is a *Windows* issue. I always wonder why tech writers *never* state this explicitly. They only ever imply it, leaving it as something only informed technologists can work out.

The Annual 50% Off Holiday Sale is on!

Now's your chance to save 50% on all books, e-Books, DVDs & CDs with coupon code GIFT at http://PMPRESS.ORG.

*Sale excludes merch, preorder titles, FOPM memberships, combo packs, gift certificates, gift boxes & gift bags. Ends 1/1/24.

We are proud to stand in solidarity with other publishers across the globe who are calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Palestine.

Read the Publishers for Palestine: Statement of Solidarity on the PM blog

https://blog.pmpress.org/2023/11/04/publishers-for-palestine-statement-of-solidarity/

The "Effective altruism" movement misses the point. The problem with philanthropy isn't the way it's targeted. It's the fact that some people have more money than whole states to spend on their idea of doing good. So the fix isn't to make philanthropy more "effective", but to make it more democratic.

(1/2)

#EffectiveAltruism #Philanthropy

Microsoft creates byzantine systems that are pointlessly complex. The purpose of that complexity - against all engineering practice - is not technical, it's entirely human: to keep legions of IT techs employed & insisting on their employers persisting with Microsoft (because most of those legions are sharp enough to know that without MS, they'd be unemployed). Most* of the rest of the world carries the cost and daily pain.

* a few of us rejected Microsoft decades ago & have no regrets.

@futuresprog Microsoft is entirely unworthy of its dominant position. It's certainly entirely rubbish at anything tech-related.

Wow, got an email from a customer who's no longer getting password recovery emails from a #libre web app I run for them. Turns out Microsoft has randomly turned off the (non-auth) SMTP service they were using to send the emails (rather than an authenticating account, as that incurs a license fee). Part of an unannounced 'security initiative', apparently.

I feel nothing but pity for people who, though no fault of their own, have Microsoft corporation software foisted upon them. Poor sods.