Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Speaking Freely is back! In our latest interview we spoke with Tanka Aryal, President of Digital Rights Nepal, to learn about the state of freedom of expression in the country. Read what he had to say here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/11/speaking-freely-tanka-aryal

The West's attempts to transition from fossil fuels to electricity is going to be/is already being carried out on the backs of the people in the "developing" world. And, of course, we'll do that while claiming that we're actually being charitable towards them.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/bad-samaritans-in-foreign-aid.html

In the last 125 years, bobcats have recovered significantly from extremely low numbers, with several million individuals found throughout North America today.

Bobcats help reduce the spread of diseases from animals to humans partly because they and other large mammals are poor disease vectors. Bobcats also prey on the small rodents that easily transmit pathogens.

By Christine Woodside
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/11/bobcats-are-back-and-theyre-helping-protect-people-from-zoonotic-disease/

#News #Conservation #Environment #Wildlife #smallcats #Animals

Don't tell me Google AI is an aggregator of information that digests it and then generates content

It literally is stealing and copyright infringement. At best it simply just rewrites what it has stolen

An accident happened in my region a few hours ago, a small publisher writes about it in their online newspaper and Google AI spews it out almost word for word

Readers no longer get a search result and have to visit the site where the site may earn from its trade as first choice.

Google Search: https://www.google.com/search?q=Seth+I.+Jones%2C+age+42

Victimized publication: https://www.peoplesdefender.com/2024/11/12/ripley-man-killed-in-two-vehicle-crash/

Threatened With A Ban In #India, #Wikimedia Agrees To Hand Over Personal Information About Wikipedians To Delhi High Court - https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/12/threatened-with-a-ban-in-india-wikimedia-agrees-to-hand-over-personal-information-about-wikipedians-to-delhi-high-court/ not good; by me, fwiw... #privacy

Record labels unhappy with court win, say ISP should pay more for user piracy - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/11/record-labels-unhappy-with-court-win-say-isp-should-pay-more-for-user-piracy/ remember: for #copyright companies, enough is never enough...

#NHS league tables could 'demoralise' staff and make recruitment harder, says leading A&E doctor - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/nov/13/wes-streeting-nhs-hospital-league-tables-starmer-badenoch-pmqs-uk-politics-live?page=with:block-67346e668f082c1a66381eec#block-67346e668f082c1a66381eec league tables are what you do when you don't know what to do...

Killer @forgejo feature: project's #cargo registry.

(also applies to @gitea and @Codeberg )

If you don't want to support #Microsoft gatekeeping of #crates_io through #github

https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326

then just set up your independent source!

https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/packages/cargo/

Kudos for implementing this.

#forgejo #gitea #codeberg #git #opensource #freesoftware #rustlang #rust

Lies, Panic, And Politics: The Targeted Takedown Of #Backpage - https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/12/lies-panic-and-politics-the-targeted-takedown-of-backpage/ "The case against Backpage was built on lies, innuendo, and a willful misunderstanding of how the internet works. But that didn’t stop the government from destroying the company and its founders’ lives."

"Your body,
My choice"
Posts Are Spreading Post-Election.
Anyone Who Says This Should Be Fired—Immediately

I fully support firing whoever said it, texted it, or scrawled it on a Post-it note and stuck it to someone’s chair.
I asked a couple of employment attorneys if they disagree,
if there is any reason in the world you shouldn’t fire someone who did this.
Kate Bischoff, an employment attorney and HR consultant in Minnesota, responded:
"No reason. It should be done. It’s expressing a predatory nature which is often the first step to harassment. I’d delight in firing them"

Jon Hyman, an employment attorney in Ohio, said:
"I’d fire. Clear harassment and has no place at work.
In this kind of case, you don’t need to go through progressive discipline. You don’t need to send someone to counseling. Terminate."

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/your-body-my-choice-posts-are-spreading-post-election-anyone-who-says-this-should-be-fired-immediately/91016921

A lot of people are suddenly realizing that their orgs or communities need digital security and privacy training. If you are a person with a technical or teaching background and you think you might be the right person to give such a training, you should check out the Security Education Companion for teaching materials and tips: https://www.securityeducationcompanion.org/

Just so a Microsoft guy breathlessly spruiking 'Microsoft Ignite' conference on Mastodon, and I can't imagine anything more tone deaf here. He should be embarrassed to be working for them.

The Murdoch family's Fox "News" is now the zero-training ground for running the most powerful military in the history of the world.

We are genuinely screwed.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/pete-hegseth-secretary-of-defense/index.html

Question for people who use crowdfunding: do crowdfunding services typically submit income tax documentation to governments?  I'm in the U.S., so I'm personally most interested in the IRS, and I actually don't know to what degree this or isn't a thing in other countries.

Relatedly, if I were to take crowdfunding for a project, I'm wondering if I would need to set myself up as a "sole proprietor" or something.  How does this work?

Grotesque abuse of power by a Georgia sheriff who arrests a woman because her 10-year-old son walked unsupervised from home into a small town.

https://reason.com/2024/11/11/mom-jailed-for-letting-10-year-old-walk-alone-to-town/

A friend of mine with a vision impairment can't drive and relies on cycling & bussing (with her bike) to get kids to school & to get to work. This blanket nationwide ban on 'bikes-on-busses' seems like a major overreaction.https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533273/blame-bandied-about-in-bike-rack-bus-ban-blow-up Anyone know what we can do to overturn it urgently?! It has essentially ruined my friend's family life and employment policies.

#CycleAdvocacy

Sorry, it's pretty damn clear that #RocketLab is not an honourable actor here. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533616/rocket-lab-us-headquarters-threatens-nz-academic-with-defamation-action
The people of Mahia granted them access to their launch site on the basis of a promise not to aid US military activities. They almost immediately betrayed that trust: https://northandsouth.co.nz/2021/03/14/rocket-lab-military/ We need to stop celebrating RocketLab - they're not even an NZ company any more.

So apparently come November 15 Twitter/X has decided that it will use your tweets to train AI, no opt-out. I am in the process of deleting my entire twitter history, after which I guess I'll finally be closing out my account.

#libobscura is going through the final crunch... I mean, touches, before release.

I just realized the project page and the #readme are like continuous announcement posts. For some people, it's going to be the first contact with your work, so tell them;

- are they the intended audience?
- how do they benefit from this?
- where is the project going?
- how far along is it?
- how to try it out?

/me goes back to rewriting

#project #marketing #opensource

Beginning to believe that @Gargron doesn't want me contributing to #mastodon — he's now partially recreated three of my pull requests that I've worked on.

My PRs didn't ship because I needed feedback from the team who were busy.

Like, I'm happy to spend the time and money to contribute to Mastodon, but it's horrifically rude to just redo someone's work when they've put a tonne of work into doing something.

He's also done this to me in the past in 2018 with the report management tools.