Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

You've heard all the reasonable arguments, but here is my selfish pitch if you still need convincing. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/25/2279370/-Cartoon-Save-this-cartoonist

🚨NEWS: Trump's Senate ally Sen. Mike Lee is now blocking the appointment of the government's ethics enforcer, declaring the GOP wants the job open until Trump wins.

That would let Trump install a crony to waive anti-corruption laws for his new White House. https://www.levernews.com/senate-gops-scheme-to-let-trump-self-police-ethics/

They're tracking abortion patients across state lines.

This is why I was banging on about digital security when Roe fell.

Basically everyone should be using burner phones when seeking abortion care in abortion hostile states— or even states where abortion is legal now but in jeopardy. https://www.notus.org/technology/cell-phone-tracking-law-enforcement-abortion-clinic https://www.notus.org/technology/cell-phone-tracking-law-enforcement-abortion-clinic

Israeli airstrikes kill at least 72 across #Gaza - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/25/israeli-airstrikes-kill-across-gaza "Thirty-eight killed in Khan Younis including 13 children from same family, as survivors sift through rubble" the world has turned away, but it's still happening

Fascinating to hear on RNZ right now - a professor at University of Canterbury (talking about earthquake engineering and health implications) has just had a very well-founded rant about how people creating open source apps to help parents of kids with embedded medial devices track their kids health get sued by device manufacturers. They claim copyright over the device data that is *unique to the person's own body*. Those manufacturers are unethical and dishonourable.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for #opensource - https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/25/open_source_funding_ads/ "Puts Chief Tightwad Officers on notice" damn right

🙄

I've already done the training myself, and I just made three calls, and two people picked up.

One of them isn't available on election day, but was happy to sign up for the phone bank tonight. The other said that he's unavailable this year but apologized and thanked me for what I'm doing : )

This really is a friendly phone bank.

How are the campaigns spending the final stretch? https://brianmcfadden.org/2024/10/18/campaign-closers/

**Time-sensitive**: There's a critical need for poll observers in Georgia for the upcoming U.S. election.

Today (Oct 25, 2024) from 5:30pm to 7pm ET, Swing Blue Alliance is hosting a phone bank to help recruit poll observers:
https://swingbluealliance.org/calendar/recruit-georgia-poll-observers-with-swing-blue-alliance-9/

Boosts very much appreciated.

Another editorial page resignation at LA Times --

'For her part, Klein wrote her decision to quit was made “simple and easy” by Soon-Shiong’s statement, in part because forcing the editorial board to conjure up positive things about Trump “works as well as any other lie designed to make him look like anything better than sludge.”'

https://www.thewrap.com/two-more-la-times-editorial-writers-quit-over-block-of-kamala-harris-endorsement-exclusive/?utm_source=www.status.news&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=turbulence-at-the-times

Introducing Sonusmix, an app to easily manage audio routing in Pipewire. It features virtual devices, volume control, routing, application endpoints to manage entire applications at once, persistence, and some tools to work around some of Pipewire's issues. It's available as an AppImage, Flatpak, or Nix package. Feedback is highly appreciated, we have a Matrix channel too! Please let us know if you have any issues!

https://codeberg.org/sonusmix/sonusmix

#linux #pipewire #audio #opensource #codeberg #rust

We're learning more about the serious threat that Musk poses to U.S. national security.

He's completely wired into America's security apparatus, and has been one of Putin's phone pals.

Democrats need to recognize that much of this got going under Obama, whose administration was simply reckless in trusting this guy.

Great reporting by the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/musk-putin-secret-conversations-37e1c187?st=GPGB3J&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Reminder: no employer that forces you to compromise your ethics and aesthetics by requiring you to run MS Windows is worthy of your talents.

If you need that job, then stick with it, but know that you have every right to feel aggrieved and unvalued (and to question both the competence and motives of those making decisions in the business), and that you should feel justified in jumping ship for a better opportunity that respects your intelligence & agency at the first opportunity.

Given that Microsoft owns VSCode, Github, NPM and basically Typescript I do really not feel comfortable building using any of those.

Network effects of colonization. As companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Google steal our indigenous languages and sell them as a service, many more for profit colonial organizations will use those services to sell back to us. Eg Riverside using OpenAI and now "works in te reo Māori." Microsoft essentially buying OpenAI concentrates more wealth and enshrines profits from colonialism. The best part is how first they tried to kill our languages. Indigenous saved them so colonizers can profit.

This is why I have been trying to warn about BlueSky.

BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

Their new board member is a bitcoin researcher who promotes NFTs.

BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says that the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation".

(via @jwz)

Update on our Code of Conduct policy:

Following extensive internal and external discussions, we have decided to update the Kolektiva.social code of conduct. While there will be additional changes coming in the near future, there are two that we will be adopting effective immediately. In this post, we will discuss our rationale for these changes, and how they will affect our moderation practices. The obvious context and impetus for the changes is the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the increasingly brutal Israeli military campaigns being waged in the West Bank and Lebanon.

The TLDR; version:

1) We are removing the section of our Code of Conduct that specifically prohibits Analogizing Israel and Nazi Germany.

&

2) We will be taking a more active role in removing posts that uncritically celebrate the Al Aqsa Flood attack of October 7 2023, and/or glorify militarized, authoritarian actors in the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Syrian and Iranian states.

We’ll go over both of these points individually, but first we want to acknowledge that there are users who will take issue with these decisions for different and mutually-conflicting reasons. While we regret this, we also see it as inevitable. We welcome feedback, discussion and constructive criticism.

The Kolektiva mod team is made up of individuals with our own opinions and strongly held views. While we don’t always agree on everything 100%, we try to come to consensus whenever possible, and to be guided by our shared anarchist principles and values. Sometimes this process moves slowly, and requires numerous conversations, which has been the case here.

The past year has been utterly horrific. The scale and constant bombardment of ethno-nationalist and religious-sectarian violence, massacres and atrocities has ignited rage, hatred, and a thirst for vengeance in many people’s hearts. It has shattered many people’s illusions about shared human values, and added a new sense of urgency to discussions on the role and ethics of violence as it relates to revolutionary and anti-colonial struggle, tactics and strategy. While often difficult, we hope these discussions and debates continue, and that they produce new affinities and ultimately, more effective resistance against the forces that divide and subjugate us.

(1/3)

@GuerillaOntologist reading the full piece, it doesn’t sound like they are all that much reformed.

brought to you by...
https://archive.is/fM4pM

“We take it back,” Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, two of America’s most prominent health economists, declare in a new book, We’ve Got You Covered, their blueprint for reforming our health care system. After years of preaching “the gospel” that “patients must pay something for their care,” they’ve now abandoned the message.