Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Instead of telling a disabled person what they should or shouldn’t be able to do… ask them how you could help them accomplish what they need.

Listen to their struggles. Approach the situation with compassion.

Offer genuine support.

That’s the best way to be an ally.

The US Air Force is discharging trans service members to comply with Trump’s “two gender” Executive Order.

Today they announced they won’t provide retirement pay to the trans service members who’ve been discharged.

This is egregious violation of basic civil rights that every single person should oppose.

They fought for the country that is now denying them the right to literally exist.

Don’t let them lose their retirement fund as well.

Remember, as soon as you agree it’s ok to take one group’s rights away… we’re all vulnerable.

We all have rights or none of us do.

#uspol #fascism #TransRightsAreHumanRights #lgbtq

Anti vaxx rhetoric is dangerous.

Not only does it promote the spread of contagious and preventable disease, but it radicalizes people.

The disinformation campaigns prey on people’s fears of death and disability. They turn that fear into anger.

Today a man opened fire at Emory University in Atlanta.

It appears he was targeting the CDC because he believed the COVID vaccines made him sick.

This is what propaganda does. And it’s only getting worse.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/active-shooter-emory-university

#uspol #cdc #covidisnotover #vaccines #emory #gunviolence

Cuomo is attacking Mamdani for having a rent stabilized apartment at $2300 a month.

He says he should move out immediately because he’s “rich” and someone else needs that apartment.

The uber rich old establishment white dude is shaming a guy who makes $47k a year for his $2300 apartment.

Not only that, if Mamdani did move out, the landlord could legally raise the rent. Benefiting no one.

Further proof Cuomo has no idea how things actually work for lower income people.

In preparation to ditch my Facebook account, I requested data logs for the ~15 years I've used the site. Result: a file of less than 1MB. And the ridiculously bogus file had events with dates like January 01, 1970 -- decades before Mark Zuckerberg was even born.

A scumbag company in any decade...

Some interesting developments seem to be going on with the Calyx project, first with the founder/CEO stepping down and then with this interesting message around rotation of signing keys.

https://calyxos.org/news/2025/08/01/a-letter-to-our-community/

Any #infosec folks wanna help me with some decent data to backup the following point? I am trying to make the point to some executives that a #password policy requiring minimum 8 characters with 1 symbol, mixed case, and 1 number is just not reasonable in 2025. (I'm commenting on another company's policy, not my own!)

What is a good example of a policy (e.g., NIST 800-63 or whatever) that said 49 bits was no good?

I currently say: 49 bits of entropy was unacceptably low in 2005. It is unthinkably low in 2025. What can I point to that might resonate better than "bits of entropy?"

Using the classic method with Shannon's estimate, I figure it's on the order of 49 bits of entropy but that's only if it's purely random from the full character set, and we konw that's not true.

I'm not looking for rhetorical suggestions. I'm good at rhetoric. I'm looking for references I can point to (like "XYZ published in 2011 that the minimum acceptable password was 56 bits of entropy")

feel free to boost for fun
#security #cybersecurity

🔵 This week's Tom the Dancing Bug
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READ THE COMIC RIGHT HERE👇

They should gimme some of that A.I. cash they're setting on fire. https://patreon.com/BrianMcFadden

Mexit, not Brexit, is the new priority for the UK - https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/08/opinion_column_mexit_not_brexit/ "A #Microsoft Exit strategy isn’t just a good idea, it’s vital. It must go a long way beyond a farewell to Redmond"

New one

I keep hearing AI proponents say that it's critical to develop these AI-using skills *now*, because otherwise you'll be left behind.

But isn't the whole point that AI means you can just let all your skills atrophy and let the magic box do things for you?

Any AI system that you can't just sit down and use is *surely* not the True AI. ;-)

“I’m a guy who has been running independent websites and dealing with ad networks for more than 15 years and this book demystified a lot for me.”

https://tedium.co/2025/08/07/ari-paparo-yield-google-antitrust-review/

Elite universities are caving to Trump’s authoritarian demands. Here’s what you can do to fight back: https://indivisible.org/resource/elite-universities-are-caving-trumps-authoritarian-demands-what-you-can-do-next?source=mastodon

Two years ago when researchers found and publicly exposed an intentional backdoor in a TETRA encryption algorithm used to secure radio communications for police/military/intel agencies around the world -- the algorithm involved a key advertised as one strength but secretly reduced to 32 bits -- the European organization that produced the algorithm told users that to secure their communications they could deploy an end-to-end encryption solution on top of the backdoor'd algorithm. Now the same researchers say they found a security problem with the end-to-end solution as well -- another reduced key. Here's my story for Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/encryption-made-for-police-and-military-radios-may-be-easily-cracked-researchers-find/

Google calendar can be poisoned with invisible, malicious Gemini prompts:

https://www.darkreading.com/cyberattacks-data-breaches/google-gemini-ai-bot-hijacks-smart-homes

Do I have to stop clicking on calendar invitations? What are the alternatives?

If Google can't get security or "AI" right, what hope is there that anyone will?

We're going to need journalists to stop talking about synthetic text extruding machines as if they have *thoughts* or *stances* that they are *trying* to *communicate*. ChatGPT can't *admit* anything, nor *self-report*. Gah.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-chatbot-psychology-manic-episodes-57452d14

Psst... looking for a new club to join? 👀

Great news, ours is looking for new members: https://codeberg.org