Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Is #Starlink designed to provide only a small number of users satellite internet at a steep premium? Yes.

Is #Starlink making a mess of low orbit and the upper atmosphere? Yes.

Is #Starlink incompetently designed and being hacked by organized crime? Also yes.

QT UNODC

"Despite Starlink use being strictly monitored and, in some cases, restricted through geofencing, organized crime groups appear to have found ways around existing security protocols"

https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2024/TOC_Convergence_Report_2024.pdf

I just emailed my senators asking them to vote in favor of Bernie Sanders' resolution to halt $20 billion of weapons from being sent to Israel.

Here's the form if you want to do the same

https://act.newmode.net/action/ifnotnow/tell-your-senator-say-no-20-billion-weapons-israel

#CeasefireNow #NotAnotherBomb #Israel #Gaza #Lebanon

"Given that much—perhaps, most—of political media will not adequately report on this and inform voters of what Vice President Harris plans to do for Rural America, I’m gonna take the rare step of publishing her plan, in full, as a blog post."

https://charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-has-a-great-plan-for

@RadioAddition ... really?

(Some) screen readers can’t read password hidden text,
Some people may have memory or cognitive issues,
Those experiencing hand tremors are more likely to make typing mistakes,

^ quick google search

add to that:
long passwords
slowly dying keyboards
confirming that is what you typed

It's a problem every morning I log in to work.

AI really is the new bitcoin: Google and Facebook extend coal burning in Omaha

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/10/14/ai-really-is-the-new-bitcoin-google-and-facebook-extend-coal-burning-in-omaha/

The question we should be asking of every new technology : is it worth the resources that it costs?

(one of the resources, in this case, being our rapidly diminishing global carbon budget)

Billionaires are *pretty confident* that they can't be taxed - not just that they *shouldn't* be taxed, but rather, that it is *technically impossible* to tax the ultra-rich. They're not shy about explaining why, either - and neither is their army of lickspittles.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/15/piketty-pilled/#tax-justice

1/

Why does the #x86 #ISA keep getting new fixed-length #vector extensions rather than variable-length ones like #RiscV did?

Every new length gets another copy of the same instructions. Not only does this waste instruction encoding space, it also means older CPUs can't support the new array lengths even if the data inside is of a supported size.

What's the reason?

#askfedi #intel #amd #hpc #cpu #hardware

Reposting a very well written piece on a recent climate study. I learned a few things about the science as well.

Not for the faint of heart though.

"Another process which is absent from the climate models is the basic fact that trees die from drought."

"It’s been assumed that natural sinks are always going to be with us. The truth is, we don’t really understand them and we don’t think they’re always going to be with us."

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/10/scientists-alarmed-collapse-natural-carbon-sinks/

The IMF is a loan-sharking operation run on behalf of Western corporations.

https://cepr.net/the-global-souths-poor-should-not-be-subsidizing-the-imf/

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: This is the time of year when technology rebels against me.

https://www.eviscerati.org/articles/2024/10/its-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year/

This is an invitation to native speakers and experts of arabic, hebrew, persian and all other Right-To-Left languages: The #faircamp static site generator for audio producers will receive updates and corrections regarding layout and interface issues with RTL languages in the coming weeks. The more issues are brought to my attention, the more can be resolved! :)

If you'd like to help out, get in touch! I'm happy to set up a call to try to sketch out an (actual or dummy) faircamp site together and talk about the problems you see (and afterwards I'll look into resolving them for everyone). Likewise you can also just explore on your own if you're interested to do that and send me messages/screenshots outlining issues you found - any way to approach this is very welcome!

If you're not familiar with faircamp yet, check out the website: https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

Shout-out to @nlnet for making this kind of work possible through their project grants, and also to https://tinanay.avocadosh.xyz who are featured in the screenshot (and sorry for the RTL glitches for now - this is my declaration to learn and improve :)).

I'm also grateful to everyone who shares this call with their RTL peers, thank you!

About 80% of countries fail to submit plans to preserve #nature ahead of global summit - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/15/about-80-percent-countries-fail-submit-plans-preserve-nature-ahead-cop16-aoe "Countries promised to save 30% of land and sea for nature - but as their deadline approaches, only 24 have followed through with a plan" just pathetic

At minimum, we need a tax on all digital ad revenue. With all resulting funds earmarked for funding public interest media production and distribution.

I would include the reputation laundering industry in that too. If your business makes money from inflencing people's thinking and decision-making on behalf of the highest bidder, you should be taxed to pay for cleaning up the misinformational mess you make. Publicly-funding fact-checking, financial watchdog journalism, etc.

(5/?)

#PolicyNZ

I had completely forgotten that I was actually paying for daily backups, but let me just say how happy I am that at some point in the past I decided to pay for daily backups.

Ugh. I've got a couple fairly involved Drupal 7 -> 10 migrations to do for personal sites. They've been too far down the priority list for too long... now shit's about to get real and progress will be made. **pinky swears

Nice - and now this - the largest by far - Mastodon instance is rockin' v4.3.0. Smooth as. Only took about 25 min all up, mostly due to having to dump the whole database (about 20 min of it) prior to starting so that I had a known good copy with minimal opportunity for unrecorded changes (should I have to recover from backup) in the meantime! 😎

Oooo - shiny new Mastodon 😜 Just finished first upgrade (it only took about 15-20 min) 😎

"There's nothing special about Musk, Altman, or Zuckerberg. Accepting that requires you to also accept that the world itself is not one that rewards the remarkable, or the brilliant, or the truly incredible, but those who are able to take advantage of opportunities, which in turn leads to the horrible truth that those who often have the most opportunities are some of the most boring and privileged people alive."

-Ed Zitron, You Can't Make Friends With The Rockstars
https://www.wheresyoured.at/rockstars/

Allowing foreign capital to flood in and buy up or build things like ferries, hospitals, roads, and water infrastructure, will mean that future users of these things will pay. The owners will have no incentive to upgrade or maintain beyond the bare minimum. They will have little or no competition, and you can bet that Luxon and Co. will make sure they are not regulated.

So get ready for sewage on beaches, sinking ships, US-style healthcare, and an environment trashed beyond recognition.