Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

60 German universities leave X.

So why are politicians still on X?

https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-germany-2025-1-more-than-60-german-universities-and-research-institutions-leave-x/

I think I've figured out how to get #nginx to 1) terminate #TLS for some domains, but also 2) forward any *other* TLS connections, intact, to another machine.

It's kind of stupid though: You listen on 443 in a `stream` context with `ssl_preread on` and send some of the traffic to another upstream on localhost -- the same nginx, listening on a different port in an `http` context, configured to actually terminate TLS. (The rest passes to the other machine.)

...is there a better way to do this?

Good piece about Northeastern University's upcoming and dubious CS curriculum change:

https://huntnewsnu.com/82511/editorial/op-eds/op-ed-northeasterns-redesign-of-the-khoury-curriculum-abandons-the-fundamentals-of-computer-science/

Sounds like #NEU is trying to move towards the "coding boot camp" model, which is completely the wrong thing in an industry experiencing downturn *and* a glut of junior devs.

This will hurt new students' ability to distinguish themselves from the rest of the market—and will cheapen the value of existing alumni's degrees.

We need a whole lot more of this from 'higher ed', please, globally: https://www.computable.nl/2025/01/10/universiteiten-starten-nextcloud-pilot-als-alternatief-voor-big-tech/ (translate from Dutch if required 😁 )

#uspol

After many years and experiments, another conclusion I'd like to share:

- Make sure you "own" (well, better: rent) at least one domain name with a recognisable but not "funny" name (my main domain is wildeboer.net)
- Only "buy" one of .com, .net, .org, .eu (when you live there) or your countries top level domain (TLD). Ignore all the fancy hype TLDs.

Your domain can become your digital identity authority that YOU control. This will become more important mid-to longterm, IMHO. 1/n

Has there ever been a situation where the small community network allows the bigger commercial network to bridge, interface, etc. and it has resulted in the smaller community network growing and becoming a viable alternative the commercial one? I feel like I get in this argument every few weeks on fedi, and, to my knowledge, there are literally no examples of this happening ever. But I do want to be fair if I'm just wrong and they exist.

#AskFedi

New Report Finds The US Only Doing Politics At a Sixth-Grade Level

TIL that on #Meta platforms now one can write terrible, offensive slurs against LGBTQIA+ folks and immigrants… with zero repercussions. But the second one mentions a #Fediverse project like #Pixelfed, the post is automatically removed.

Meta “moderation” policies in 2025: racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia and sexism are allowed; mention of competition is strictly forbidden.

Source: https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113813541987227835

#BigTech #dystopia #QuitMeta

I've never used the #FediHired hashtag because I've mainly seen it used for devs.

But just putting it out there that I'm available for projects and consulting, with the kind of stuff I tend to do, from #OpenBadges and #VerifiableCredentials, through to #ProductManagement and helping organisations #WorkOpen available here:

https://dougbelshaw.com/work/

The Back In Time project is looking for people who are experienced with migrating TravisCI to the CI offered by Codeberg (@Codeberg).

Currently Back In Time is at Microsoft GitHub using TravisCI. But we tend to move to #Codeberg because of obvious reasons.

Confirmed it myself: ChatGPT is crawling the fediverse, even servers like aoir.social whose policies prohibit crawling and scraping of data. cc @admin1 @nik @ubiquity75 @rwg @tstruett @paufder ht @atomicpoet for bringing this to my attention

The Killer CEOs of Big Oil

Public Citizen would like you to know that there are killers among us.

They wear $2,000 suits and travel in private jets, unbothered by the TSA or the teeming masses. Their children attend the finest universities in the world, and they vacation on private islands and yachts. Many “earn” more in a day than most Americans take home in a year; their positions ensure their heirs will never have to work a day in their lives.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-oil-climate-criminals

Biden gets an early start on Trump's deport-them-all madness. Crops go unharvested.

If you like food inflation, this is the way to make it surge.

https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigration-sweep/

Omar Aziz was Syrian anarchist who played an important role in the Syrian revolution. He came back to Syria in 2011 to join the revolution, but was captured and thrown in the brutal prisons of the regime that ended his life.

He passed away before seeing the fall of the regime, before reaping the fruits of his majestic work. But today we can finally claim:

📣 The regime is dead! The legacy of Omar Aziz is alive!

▪️ This is a call, a call to remember, a call to struggle. Omar Aziz has been an inspiration for many of us, and his legacy is alive.

▪️ This February 16th, on the 12 anniversary of his death from the brutal prisons of the regime, let’s celebrate life and let’s celebrate revolution.

▪️ And let’s fight. Because nothing less than a fight like hell for Syria will suffice!

🌐 https://RememberOmarAziz.net

Check out the website for the full callout, and a link to the Syrian Revolution Reader, a compilation of around 100 pages of texts and resources about the Syrian Revolution.

I feel a bit of pity for the niave/foolish people who've fully tied their businesses/professional identity to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (and Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Shopify, Wix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) because they're going to get spanked. They should bone up on basic governance & risk mitigation. Here's my little refresher (which also features a cautionary tale): https://davelane.nz/mshostage

But: Life Isn't Like That, Is It? is a new collection of stories by Boff Whalley, musician, author, and one of the founding members of the anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba and Commoners Choir. The Kickstarter is live now! See the link in our bio!

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/elan-love-deluge-farms-mental-health-ranchers-farmers-climate-change/article_7e69a5b1-b8b7-501d-8a63-b32fa96e3b7c.html

What is your experience of scholarly culture around generative AI for writing and ideas generation?

@futurebird I find the most important thing is to get people to understand what "AI" is actually doing. Something I've found handy for that is MENACE, a machine that "learns" to play Noughts and Crosses but is made entirely of matchboxes full of beads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_Crosses_Engine

Explaining how this thing plays a game with no understanding of the rules helps get across the way in which ChatGPT etc. spit out text without understanding it at all.