Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

new security milestone reached: #chatmail relay servers are hardened to only transfer end-to-end encrypted e-mail with metadata minimization. No cleartext message can enter or leave the secure chatmail network anymore.

We now talk about "chatmail relays" rather than servers as they only ephemerally store messages until delivery. Dirt cheap to run.

We opened up our #rust "chatmail core" infrastructure library and set up an overview of the community driven ecosystem ...

https://chatmail.at

"Donald #Trump says the #tariffs he has announced will generate “$6tn in investments” but experts explain that tariffs are actually paid for by American businesses and consumers. That would make it the largest “#tax hike” in US history." - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/02/donald-trump-tariffs-trade-latest-live-us-politics-news?page=with%3Ablock-67eda0f38f0800d4cb06c411#block-67eda0f38f0800d4cb06c411 what a moron #whoops

"Recreational 4WDing" is a hobby no one should have. There. I said it.

Read about how legal risks created by the Biden administration's ill-advised journalist prosecutions might be why Jeffrey Goldberg would voluntarily exit a Signal chat with Trump officials that could've generated countless important stories.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/signalgate-group-chat-atlantic-editor-jeffrey-goldberg-trump-bondi.html

“Unless you are using GPG (GNU Privacy Guard), email is not end-to-end encrypted, and the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points, including on Google’s email servers,” EFF’s @evacide told @washingtonpost. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/01/waltz-national-security-council-signal-gmail/

Fully in favour of banning recreational driving on beaches in NZ. And *enforcing* the hell out of it. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018981523/no-cars-on-the-beach

Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing the Media Industry

"Many employee-owned media companies also take little or no money from advertisers. For instance, in 2023, Morning Brew reported that Defector got 95 percent of its revenue from subscribers during its first year..."
#WorkerCoops #WorkerOwned #Media

https://geo.coop/articles/worker-owned-news-outlets-are-changing-media-industry

So the Dems stood against discrimination in mortgage lending - but not *for* the minimum wage that would have lifted the lowest paid workers out of poverty so the could afford a mortgage. They stood for abortion rights, but *against* Medicare For All, which meant all women had the right to an abortion, but the poorest women couldn't afford one.

3/

It’s time to get ready for May Day! This month get 40% off all labor titles and 25% off all labor merch. Check out these best-sellers, and shop the sale via the link in our bio.

How about all the credit unions in the US fund a fork of GnuCash that can compete with QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.? Good free financial software would benefit the credit unions' membership.

One mod's opinion: mastodon.social remains the source of most reported content... Really, if they're not going to screen registrations, or are too big to moderate effectively, they should just close registrations and point people to other instances.

Praise for THE AI CON from across the pond.

UK release date: May 22
US release date: May 13

Want to read at the first possible moment and help me and @alex make a splash?

Pre-order at your favorite local bookseller or via the links at https://thecon.ai

Wisconsin supreme court race: liberal Susan Crawford beats Musk-backed candidate - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/02/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-result-race fab slap in the face for #musk

US embassies to contractors worldwide: Cancel any diversity programs or risk going unpaid - https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/business/us-embassies-european-suppliers-dei-intl/index.html as others have pointed out, the solution is simple: don't provide cleaning services etc., let #muricans stew in their own filth, real and metaphorical

I think the dirty little secret here is that the Democratic Party really, really, really wants the Zionists to like them -- and way more than they want Palestinians, Muslims, or college students to like them.

I remember not too long ago when anyone advocating for free speech was assumed (my many) to be a right-winger. My how things change.

"President Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on constitutionally-protected speech has solicited crickets from key Democratic Party leaders and self-described ​“free speech” advocates in the U.S. media."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-party-free-speech-trump-deportation-mahmoud-khalil

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, says its bandwidth costs have gone up 50% since Jan 2024 — a rise they attribute to AI crawlers.

AI companies are killing the open web by stealing visitors from the sources of information and making them pay for the privilege

The "United States Disappeared Tracker' is brilliant, though we should be sickened that it is needed. Huge kudos to Prof. Danielle Harlow.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/danielleharlow/viz/UnitedStatesDisappearedTracker/Map

Here's her explainer:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-harlow-9a543a91?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAABN2vA0B7h8s6epajj2aERAymBK-Mfl7Jds

The #Forgejo monthly update was published ✨ It is a high level overview of the project activities.

Forgejo v11.0 is on track for release on 16 April 2025. New versions of v7.0 and v10.0 have been released. Improvements to the availability of Forgejo actions have been completed and the Forgejo runner has received new versions. The DDoS attack on code.forgejo.org has ceased and precautions have been taken for the future.

https://forgejo.org/2025-03-monthly-update/

Just saw a link to 'Cities Coalition for Digital Rights' on my feed. Looked at their site (with lots of participating cities, globally) trumpeting a checklist of good digital behaviours: https://citiesfordigitalrights.org/checklist mentioning good stuff like privacy-respecting IT, use of open source & open standards, etc. Then, at the bottom, they tell you to follow them... on Twitter & LinkedIn. No mention of the Fediverse. Even as I yank, I can appreciate that deep irony. I gently suggesting they get Fediwise.