Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It gives me no pleasure to hear that the damaged Anglican cathedral in Christchurch will be "mothballed".

Millions and millions of dollars from the church and ratepayers have been wasted to placate a dying set of boomers who valued a building above humanity. The Anglican bishop of the time knew that people meant more than a building, and got drummed out of town for saying so. And a crew whose driving force was nostalgia, not devotion, managed to tax every one of us in the city to fund their vision, whether we were Anglican or even Christian.

This should cause shame and reflection for the leaders who called for rebuilding - but it won't. Some are dead, and the others will claim we all need to pay more.

What an enormous waste.

the AI industry is reaching new levels of evil

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/8/24216215/palantir-microsoft-azure-ai-defense-partnership-surveillance

#tech #ai #palantir #microsoft

#Signal was warranted again, and as always they gave the only data they could give: time of registration in Unix miliseconds, and time of last connection in Unix miliseconds.

yet another reminder that you can't give away data you don't have in the first place.

https://signal.org/bigbrother/santa-clara-county/

While I've managed teams (and even a company) before, there is something about my current job that has made me really embrace and enjoy everything involved with managing. I actively enjoy all the opportunities to take care of my team and help them succeed at a deeper level than I felt in past jobs.

It's probably some combination of the great team I'm leading, and my own maturity in my career. In any case, it's something Kyle from 15 years ago wouldn't have understood at all.

Hey #SouthFlorida
Staring a microtextbanking group to try to flip some #Florida congressional seats from red to blue.
Drop your email and zip if interested -
https://forms.gle/wDVGc4Tn5tGr98fP7

#Miami #USPol #VoteSaveAmerica #VSA

Just turned on NPR and there were people discussing whether or not COVID was "endemic" and "predictable", and, yes, someone acknowledged that "endemic" doesn't mean "good."

But also... there are, like, some things about COVID that *are* predictable in good ways. For example masking predictably decreases transmission rates, as does enabling people to take time off of work.

What if we, like, used that predictability for something?

Jeremy Brecher: “One in six Americans say they would personally engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against corporate or government activities that make global warming worse. That’s about forty million adults. The fate of the earth may depend on them—and others around the world—doing so. Although the people of the world want to protect the climate, the governments and fossil fuel corporations of the world go on destroying it. The climate insurgency is a vehicle for the world’s people to realize our common interest and our goal of restoring balance to the earth’s climate system.”

Read more and find hope in action in Brecher’s Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=852

#books #bookstodon #climate #ClimateCrisis #environment

U.S. Folks: There are websites trying to trick people into thinking they've registered to vote without actually doing it. There are also efforts underway to throw out people's registrations

If you want to vote in this election, the best thing you can do is go to https://vote.gov/

It's the official site of the U.S. federal government

Registration is done by the state you live in. Vote.gov has the official links for each state to check your registration status and register if you need to

Are you going to a Software Freedom Day event this year? Have you found one in your area? #DFF #SoftwareFreedomDay2024 #AskFedi #AskFediverse #SFD #SoftwareFreedomDay

#Forgejo v8.0.1 and v7.0.7 were just released! They are security releases.

We recommend that all installations are upgraded to the latest version as soon as possible.

Check out the release notes and download it at https://forgejo.org/releases/. If you experience any issues with this release, please report to https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues.

The Carter Center used to be pretty trustworthy. I don't know that that is the case anymore. When your major funders include the State Dept. and the Walton Family (ie WalMart) I have some serious questions about your objectivity.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/elections/2024/08/05/texas-voter-suspense-list-tops-21-million-heres-what-to-do-if-youre-on-it/

Just upgrade 3 Mailcow (Dockerized) instances. Took about 15 minutes total. Running your own mail service (fully featured!) is no where near as hard as it's always made out to be.

After the news that funding for the @NGI4eu initiative would be cut for the next phase of #HorizonEU, the @EU_Commission has expressed vague support for #FreeSoftware.

The EC needs to come up with dedicated budget for #FreeSoftware solutions:

https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240808-01.html

Love this opening statement from CoCory doctorow -
"It's amazing how many of the scams that have devastated our economy and everyday people owe their success to the fact that we assume that rich people know what they're doing, so if they're doing something, it must be real."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/

Excellent new report by the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG): WasteX: Environmental harms of satellite internet mega-constellations https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/wastex-environmental-harms-of-satellite-internet-mega-constellations/

The report has great info on why 10s of thousands of throwaway satellites are terrible, and 2 powerful recommendations:

1. Pause launches until environmental reviews are done
2. Stop the categorical exclusion of satellites from environmental review

🗳️🇺🇸💪 USGSA (finally) posted a status update on Vote.gov today, in a blog post: https://www.gsa.gov/blog/2024/08/07/votegov-makes-it-easier-for-voters-to-find-trustworthy-official-voting-information

A4. Falls man seinen eigenen LKW bekleben will. Nicht in Frankreich natürlich. Oder seinen Kühlschrank. Lieferung frei Camp aufs #WAMP24 #cycling

I finally got the official #funding confirmation from @PrototypeFund .

Time to gather the needed contacts before I begin with #libobscura next month!

#libobscura is going to be a proof of concept #linux #camera library which doesn't make the same mistakes as #libcamera . I'll base it on @martijnbraam 's work with #libmegapixels .

The United States has dropped to fifty-fifth place on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, the country's lowest-ever rank.

https://progressive.org/magazine/the-way-democracy-crumbles-whitney-20240807/