Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

We live in an era of moral warfare.

This moral warfare — a struggle between different systems of morality — will decide whether the United States remains a democracy or becomes an autocracy in the coming years.

This moral warfare is being waged in multiple ways, but mainly through the flow of information. Moral warfare is conducted through information warfare — the deliberate manipulation of facts, frames and symbols.

Moral warfare imbues our language, politics, media and social media. It is an intensifying contest between different moral beliefs, ideologies and worldviews.

Welcome to Moral Warfare 101, a series of essays on the FrameLab Newsletter.

https://framelab.substack.com/p/moral-warfare-101

Did you or someone you know work with SSH back in the late 90s and early 2000s? I'd love to get some perspective on something. Please DM me by Signal.

What better way is there to learn about free software than by using it? Free software in education is a pillar of support for a free society. Help us strengthening this pillar by donating to support our work. https://u.fsf.org/41e #LearnLibre #Education

Google Groups ending support for Usenet https://www.osnews.com/story/138084/google-groups-ending-support-for-usenet/

idiot detection system...

Latest cartoon: Fossil fuel CEOs are very worried about "polarization"

#climate #cop28 #climatechange #climatecrisis #fossilfuel #protest

Even after I asked for no cynical comments . . .

Cynics in 2020: THERE ARE NEVER ANY CONSQENCES.

Guilani is found liable for $150 million.

Cynics: BIG DEAL WHO CARES NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO HIM ANYWAY.

I'll say this nicely: Please go away. You do not contribute to the conversation.

Also, you were wrong in 2020 and you were wrong now.

What the heck do you expect?

Magic trolls to appear and gobble up all the bad guys and the rest of us will live happily ever after in a perfect world?

I can't even begin to count the hours of research went into this story. Frustrated that most of that research went in the wrong direction for so long. But also very excited to share what I found, and that I finally have something to show for it all:

On Dec. 18, 2013, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that U.S. retail giant Target was battling a wide-ranging computer intrusion that compromised more than 40 million customer payment cards over the previous month. The malware used in the Target breach included the text string “Rescator,” which also was the handle chosen by the cybercriminal who was selling all of the cards stolen from Target customers. Ten years later, KrebsOnSecurity has uncovered new clues about the real-life identity of Rescator.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/12/ten-years-later-new-clues-in-the-target-breach/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rudy-giuliani-verdict-defamation-trial-georgia-election-workers/

This is the end of Guilani. He's broken and finished.

It's also a warning to people who want to spread lies about others.

"self-hosting" can be community hosting, and if the 1% into being foss-tech-dude and the 99% who prefer a life get together, we could all be less at the mercy of distant providers who treat us like plankton. tech dude could earn a decent living and be a resource for everyone rather than some weirdo in the basement. /fin

A *browser* maker adds images to their toot ... but doesn't add alt-text to them. 🤦
Ever heard of the W3C Validator?

If that wasn't bad enough (it is), it's a toot about "AI that's accessible" 🤦 🤦

And if you want to talk with them, join the proprietary discord server?
WTAF?

What does it take before you finally fire your completely incompetent management?

Can't we fork #Firefox and fund it via the EU f.e.? We need an alternative to G👀gle's browser, but @mozilla has completely lost it :-/

GM Floats a Bullshit ‘Safety’ Excuse for Dropping CarPlay
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/12/15/gm-bullshit-on-carplay

Wow, tried to join Discord because a #libre software project I like has very unfortunately made that the only place where the developers talk to folks. For some reason, Discord has banned 2 attempts to create an account saying that I'm in Violation of their TOS... I haven't even logged in yet. Suspect they've never encountered browsers with script blockers.

I've grudgingly come around to the notion that there is only one way out of the ransomware problem: Make paying a ransom illegal. This is not very different from laws that make it illegal for US companies to pay bribes to foreign officials.

I really don't see any other way out of this mess. Yes, some victims will unfortunately ignore any laws that say they can't pay, but enforcement probably will not be hard.

What will be difficult are the situations where peoples' lives are at stake in ransomware situations. This sounds callous, but we can't afford to take the short view here anymore, and our other alternatives aren't great either.

I'm quite certain this is an unpopular view, but we have already seen the cost of doing nothing. At least in the interests of congruity for our financial sanctions vs Russia, we should probably make this change sooner rather than later.

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/12/traditional-small-farmers-burned-by-indonesias-war-on-wildfires/

Nothing says transparency like an ICANN video that is unceremoniously deleted from their website after being featured in a story by KrebsOnSecurity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI8PdvBAEY8 (don't bother, the video has been removed).

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/12/icann-launches-service-to-help-with-whois-lookups/

Read Silvia Federici.

Now's your chance to get 50% off all Federici's books & e-Books with coupon code GIFT until 1/1/24.

See them all at blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/silvia-federici/

NEW: A marketing firm owned by telecom giant Cox is advertising a service to companies that claims to *actually* listen to embedded microphones in users' phones, smart TVs, and smart devices:

https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/

The last time Facebook embraced an open federated standard they did it for precisely long enough to saturate server-to-server contacts between an already existing userbase and their stuff, then shut off that federation and told anyone cut off by it to just come to Facebook instead.

This is literally something they did. This is in their playbook.

The people running the stuff behind the scenes were blindsided by it; it was an executive decision. Those people wanted to build the thing in good faith and the Business Plan was to let them until the time was right to strike.

That we're again going "It seems to be done right, let's give them a chance" is a little infuriating considering I was pretty impacted by the fallout of the last time.