Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Just saw exploit attempts against #OwnCloud CVE-2023-49103 detected by an IDS in the wild. So if you’re running OwnCloud, that’s like the final warning…

NextCloud is not vulnerable to this one.

I talk a lot about the incompetence of digital voting vendors a lot, but HOLY CATS

https://www.paddleyourownkanoo.com/2023/12/14/southwest-airlines-flight-attendants-forced-to-rerun-contract-vote-after-crew-discovered-ballot-system-was-vulnerable-to-fraud/

#infosec

It is nice to see people starting to question the fact that they host and develop free software on a proprietary infrastructure owned by Microsoft and used to scrape training data for their IA.

https://notgull.net/finding-a-forge/ by @notgull

The best time to leave Github was before it was acquired by Microsoft. The second-best time is now. Sooner or later, you will be forced out of Github like we, oldies, were forced out of Sourceforge.

https://ploum.net/2023-02-22-leaving-github.html

3M knew its chemicals were toxic three decades ago, but kept schtum. https://minnesotareformer.com/2022/12/15/toxic-3m-knew-its-chemicals-were-harmful-decades-ago-but-didnt-tell-the-public-government/

#Meta is doing EEE.

You will, eventually, be able to follow any Threads user. You will definitely be able to boost their posts onto your server's feed.

But you will probably never be able to like or comment. And your posts will remain largely invisible to Threads users.

Meta will embrace and extend into fedi, until enough relationships get made that they're reasonably certain they are the center of gravity.

The failure of the Internet to deliver its promise is particularly noticeable when you hunt for repair manuals for a product from the 90s. Used to be, the information would either be there or not there, finable or unfindable.

Now, there are hundreds of algorithmically generated sites claiming to have it just because it appeared in their search logs, generating potemkin village content traps with endless paging, broken-thumbnail named-like-the-file-you-want but actually-just-ebay-photos bullshit

Been catching occasional snatches of "The Big Dig" audio documentary on `GBH.

One tidbit I learned was that in order to secure U.S. federal funding for the Big Dig here in Massachusetts, congressional Democrats in the 1980s offered in trade that the interstate speed limit would go back up to 65 mph from the 1970s fuel efficiency speed of 55 mph.

I wonder a bit about this trade.

https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig/part-3-all-politics-is-local

I'm planning to go to the #junkyard to get some metal balls out of ball bearings.

I'm loking for >20mm balls, but the internet is unhelpful:

What kind of #machines contain such big ball bearings? The ones in #bikes are only a few mm in size. Should I be looking for #truck axles or what?

#vehicles #AskFedi #bicycle #mechanic

In case you ever wondered how CNN would describe Hitler’s Nuremberg Rallies…

#media #fascism

Palestine will be free.

Design by Josh MacPhee.

Learn more & support the Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN), an organization based in the West Bank working to house Gazan workers deported to the West Bank by Israeli forces. nonviolenceinternational.net/hirn_partner

Also popular is the "intelligence of the gaps" argument analogous to the "God of the gaps" argument.

So yeah computers can calculate but wake me up when they can beat humans at chess. Umm beat them at go. Ummm recognize a cat. Ummm write poetry.

Eventually that argument wears a little thin.

I would like to see better, more subtle arguments that distinguish humans from AI that recognizes the bag of tricks in our own heads.

No one should be surprised by what has happened with Airbnb: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-the-professional-airbnb-landlord-class-is-simply-the-worst/?kwp_0=2322170

Bezos and Musk have it deeply wrong.
The problem isn't that we need a trillion people to have more Einsteins or Mozarts.

The problem is we don't nurture and protect the ones we have.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops".

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?