Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

That older relative you do tech support for is probably not bamboozled by digital devices. They were guessing their way through Y/N ms-DOS and dodging Fatal Error cartoon bombs on Macs before you and the smartphone were born. Now they're older, wearier, and exasperated by digital coercion and the complication of simple things. They’re not listening to Bing Crosby while being amazed email exists. They’re listening to Queen while cursing enshittification & resenting the time it costs them and you.

Donald #Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/30/donald-trump-loses-appeal-e-jean-carroll "US supreme court ruled unanimously in 1997 that sitting presidents have no immunity from civil litigation over actions predating their official duties."

I've been thinking a lot about "individualism" and "individualists" lately, because so fucking many of the people who described themselves that way are apparently enthusiastically jumping on the fascist train, and fascism is so antithetical to individualism that it's hard to understand what the fuck is going on.

1/some

New from 404 Media: the Secret Service admits it never actually checked if people really consented to being tracked by a location monitoring tool, like it claimed. Under a section saying what steps had it taken to ensure consent, the agency wrote "None"

https://www.404media.co/secret-service-admits-it-didnt-check-if-people-really-consented-to-being-tracked/

"Once you’re so deep into it that you’ve done a press tour and committed yourself as a public figure to this idea, dislodging the belief that we now have a proto-AGI becomes impossible."
[source: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/]
Same for crypto. Once people have bought the hype and written a book or two about the possibilities, it's basically impossible to get them to realize that they've been led astray. As the famous saying goes, "it's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled."

For people in the UK: Some folks are trying to set up a regional rail co-op. I've felt like a co-op ownership model is a great way to go for local rail services for a long time. Seems like a worthwhile thing to throw some disposable income at, if you have it.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/go-op-som-wilts-rail

Just sayin'.

#ISBN is a centralized system, you even have to pay not insignificant amount of money to get a number.

I can't even figure out how to self-assign a #DOI .

Is there anything else that helps identify #publications that doesn't have gatekeepers?

Like some equivalent of a #torrent infohash?

Would a #blockchain solution solve problems like collisions easier than any alternatives?

#decentralization #books #publishing #digitalsovereignty #hash

Great news everyone! News Years post just dropped! Just something quick I knocked out between all the crazy Christmas engagements and moving to a new house, but I hope everyone is having a great end to the year, and we'll be back to writing lots in January.

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/merry-christmas-ya-filthy-animals-2024/

What'll we be freaking out about in 2025? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/12/27/2293188/-Cartoon-2025-Freak-out-forecast

#38c3 can anyone help me #fix an #x86 motherboard? I have a small PC which won't react to the power button. I will donate my old PC to #hardwareforfuture or something similar if this one gets fixed :)

#hardware #laptop #repair #sustainability

Learn more about the surveillance tech that law enforcement routinely deploy in our communities with our Street Level Surveillance site. https://sls.eff.org/

As David Graeber explains, the Neo-Liberal myth that Free-Market policies will end bureaucracy, is well a Myth!

This winter break I've been putting in a bit more work on Cavern, my social journaling protocol. It's time to make the journal structure less helpful to an attacker, and turn the publishing algorithm from a slightly goofy proof-of-concept into something streamlined and efficient. Also I've just been getting the protocol docs into better shape for anyone who will review them.

https://www.brainonfire.net/blog/2024/12/27/cavern-devlog-dec-2024/

"A week ago, It’s Going Down published a statement announcing that we were putting this project on hiatus after ten years. Tired and burned out, we were gambling our absence wouldn’t be missed. In short, the response from readers, friends, and long time collaborators was overwhelming and clear: many feel this project is important and should continue. We appreciate all of the incredibly kind words and those who took the time to reach out to us.

With this encouragement in mind, we have decided to continue publishing at It’s Going Down and operating the platform for the near future. Going forward, we want to focus on quality over quantity and also attempt to cultivate again a culture of report-backs and movement journalism as we go into the second Trump period. We also realize that this isn’t 2017 anymore; the site may be updated less as it has been in the past.

Life, finds a way. So will we. See you soon."

https://itsgoingdown.org/going-forward-an-update-from-the-editors/

Planes, boats, political parties, economies, societies -- the front is falling off all of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

#LLMs are a fucking scourge. Perceiving their training infrastructure as anything but a horrific all-consuming parasite destroying the internet (and wasting real-life resources at a grand scale) is delusional.

#ChatGPT isn't a fun toy or a useful tool, it's a _someone else's_ utility built with complete disregard for human creativity and craft, mixed with malicious intent masquerading as "progress", and should be treated as such.

https://pod.geraspora.de/posts/17342163

#luigimangione

Can we have many more Luigi moments, without death?

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/21/mylan-ceo-heather-bresch-epipen-congress-house-testimony/90773250/

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, the drug dealer that sells the EpiPen allergy-reaction injector defended the company's six-fold price increases in congressional testimony, painting the lifesaving treatment as less profitable than it might appear.

Well, I got downsized today

Anyone got leads for a trans girl with 10+ years at one shop (rare these days!) as a programmer/systems analyst with xp in ssrs, cognos, Crystal business reporting, database design, ERP software, WordPress, webdev, "wearing many hats" as my old boss liked to say

Near IA/IL but very willing to work remote. Prev salary ~$100k/yr

I'll have to set up a new LinkedIn with my new name

#work #programmer #trans

#Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in remarkable #Scotland #rewilding project https://www.scotsman.com/hays-way/bumblebee-population-increases-116-times-over-in-remarkable-scotland-project-4882622

"in 2021, when some of the fields managed by the project were still barley monoculture, only 35 #bumblebees were counted. But by 2023, after just two years of #NatureRestoration work in the same fields, the population increased to 4,056. The diversity of bumblebee also doubled from five to ten different species."