Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

"Becoming Unpopular: Conspiracy and Political Struggle Today" with AK Thompson at Cornell University's A.D. White House, 5pm this Friday. Co-sponsored by PM Press.

Thought for the day:

Billionaires are a symptom of poverty.

(Paraphrasing Iain Banks on money, but more specific to our times because we still need some way to allocate scarce resources, just: not like that.)

Adventures at #coding : load-bearing #comments.

In today's code base, comments are no longer comments. Write the wrong thing inside and the software stops working.

I will mercifully not disclose the name of the project.

#programming

I've always thought that citizens assemblies are good ideas, but now that I've been part of one I'm all in.

I was in a room with people I would never normally associate with, and we all brought different points of view. I care deeply about fairness, but others cared more about the environment, healthcare, education.

Experts came in to address us, giving us facts.

CAs might not be the whole solution to every problem, but they should be part of it

We’re seeking input from #FOSS maintainers as we design a fellowship program pilot. We want to test a support mechanism that addresses structural issues in the FOSS ecosystem, and support maintainers who work on open digital infrastructure in the public interest.

If you maintain open source projects, we would be very grateful if you could take ten minutes to respond to the survey:
https://survey.sovereigntechfund.de/968766

Please also repost and share with FOSS maintainers you know. Thanks!

Republicans already have a plan to rapidly privatize Medicare if Trump wins.

Tucked deep into Project 2025 is a call to “make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.”

This would be a historic handout to the insurance industry.

And the death of Medicare as we know it.

The turn to fascism in America isn’t coming just (or even primarily) from crazed fanatics. It’s coming from well funded “think tanks” full of well dressed and well fed pseudoscholars who imagine themselves to be reasonable and mannerly. https://journa.host/@w7voa/112124274481988039

You really need to read this thread, in which a witness tells of a dinner in which Trump couldn't stop talking about his appreciation of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mar-lago-judge-stark-ruling-022208652.html

Combine this with our wannabe dictator's regular denigration of certain people as sub-humans, and his relentless overall bigotry and hatred.

Journalists still can't believe what's right in their faces. They'd better start, soon.

We'd all better wake up, or we're done.

Three cybersecurity researchers discovered close to 19 million plaintext passwords exposed on the public internet by misconfigured instances of Firebase, a Google platform for hosting databases, cloud computing, and app development.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/misconfigured-firebase-instances-leaked-19-million-plaintext-passwords/

Adding real names to user profiles without users' consent “is sort of at cross purposes with the promises and goals of the Glassdoor review website," EFF’s @aaronmackey told @arstechnica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/glassdoor-adding-users-real-names-job-info-to-profiles-without-consent/

A trial court held that Snap, the maker of Snapchat, could be liable for harm to users because of widely-used features like disappearing messages. If the decision is upheld, billions of internet users will lose. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/eff-california-appellate-court-reject-trial-judges-ruling-would-penalize

🗓️ Mark your calendar: Join us and the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace & Democracy on March 27 at 7 pm ET for an important panel discussion: "The Pentagon Papers and the Ongoing Threats to Freedom of the Press"

With FPF's Trevor Timm; Danielle Brian of the Project On Government Oversight; and @knightcolumbia's Jameel Jaffer

RSVP: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rHp9zpI5QqWOqF1H_Vd54A#

What's the use case for access time in #unix ?

In my entire career I don't think I needed it once.

What was so important that people were ready to pay the penalty of writing on every read?

What is the #history of that anyway?

#askfedi #linux #posix #computing

Hey Aotearoa Fedi - I'm trying to remember who owns Trademe these days... can anyone remind me off the top of their heads?

So... Nick @thelinuxEXP points out that EU group that's been handing out well deserved fines to US BigTech for breaching EU regulations has, itself, been using it *MSO 365* in breach of those privacy regulations. The remedy is to *stop using MSO 365*. Sounds like a good idea... that should be heeded by *every single gov't department* on the planet.

This really drives home something about LLM systems. They’re very expensive to run, both to train and per-query, and hard to make cheaper. I expect them to get more expensive to run. They’re currently sold at a big loss to establish monopoly power and then raise prices dramatically. That’s the *stated* business plan.

If you’re building your business to rely on LLM, you need to factor in what you‘ll do when they pivot to making money, or they pull back because they can’t.
https://geeknews.chat/@theregister/112116266764229145

We hope that this series inspires you to check out more on The Paris Commune and other historical struggles. Some resources we found useful while making this video are listed below:

The Funambulist - The Paris Commune and the World - https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-paris-commune-and-the-world

Remembering the Commune - https://roarmag.org/paris-commune-150/

The Paris Commune - Voltarine de Cleyre https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-the-paris-commune

La Commune - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBq6YaK7GqU

Новый Вавилон AKA The New Babylon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyN6pLZGOQg

Hello and welcome to the first of what we hope will be a many episodes of our new series, This Day in Anarchist History!

In this series we’ll make brief primers on historical anarchist events, uprisings, bios of famous anarchists and beginnings of autonomous communities around the world and throughout time. It’s our hope that by understanding our past we can put our current social movements into broader perspective and fight for a better future.

In our premier episode we examine The Paris Commune, a short lived uprising when a broad coalition of the working classes took control of the city on March 18th 1871 and held out under siege until the end of May when the French national army entered Paris and executed thousands of rebels.

In the coming years, anarchists would seek vengeance for their comrades who fell at the Paris commune.

https://kolektiva.media/w/tQcBzS5xVBDshLv2rmttwJ

‘The stigma has returned’: #abortion access in turmoil in Javier #Milei’s #Argentina - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/18/argentina-abortion-javier-milei "Health workers fear the return of unsafe abortions as recent statements lead to a spike in doctors refusing to provide care"

For anyone wanting to read more about Hubzilla, this post is a great resource: https://medium.com/p/692204177d4e#eebc