Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It seems like Medium has joined DEV in becoming a useless repository of slop and slop-related discussions.

This trash is destroying the places we used to share useful ideas, and it really is a loss.

What *is* true: if I go to the NZ Lenovo site, there're no laptops available with Linux right now. If, however, I go to the US Lenovo site, a 'Build your own ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 AMD (14")' laptop (the sort of thing I'd be interested in), you have the option of Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, with a price reduction of $140 vs. the default Windows 11 Home install.

Wow, Lenovo says they're losing money on every computer pre-installed with MS Windows due to it sucking. They are apparently moving to Ubuntu Linux installed by default. Windows will only be an extra-cost option... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8OMjEWOo_M No more default Windows Tax, no more bloatware & nagware. The world might just get slightly better as a result of Microsoft losing out.

Does anybody have any good artists that they follow here? I’m looking for unconventional stuff; thrift store artists.

@onepict the Homeless Workers Movement from Brazil has a technology chapter (I am part of it) and we have a short comic book in English: https://digilabour.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Other-Tech-Worlds-Are-Possible-Vol.-1-Homeless-Workers-Movement-in-Brazil-English.pdf

We also have a non fiction book released last year that probably will get translated into English as well.

Tiny reminder FediFriends to add alt-text
to your images and media so that your posts are accessible to all, and (bonus point) more people will boost them.

Thank you!

#Mastodon #Fediverse

AI is killing, harming, delaying, or forcing higher prices on a wide range of technologies and tech products and services. The AI industry is doing to technology:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/4134728/is-ai-killing-technology.html

Brendan Carr is the State Media Critic, and his recommendations are MANDATORY. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/2/20/2369531/-Cartoon-FCC-guide

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social‬
👀The federal judges in West Virginia, where ICE has been pulling over and detaining people on the freeway, are literally screaming about ICE's tactics.

"It is an assault on the constitutional order," Judge Goodwin says. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.242928/gov.uscourts.wvsd.242928.28.0.pdf

Do NOT verify your Linkedin profile. Here's why:
https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

After years of activist pressure, lawsuits, and bad press Ring made much needed reforms. Now, they’re pivoting back to mass police surveillance as a business model. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/amazon-ring-cashes-techno-authoritarianism-and-mass-surveillance

Those who live by the grind will die by the burnout.

Do any moots know someone who we might be able to consult about restructuring a mid-size FOSS project? Essentially to migrate from a BDFL model to a more flat-structured democratic organisation.

We are discussing how to restructure #postmarketOS so that it can continue to scale up and be a truly community-run project.

We have some idea of how co-ops like Igalia do this, but we have a lot of differences (like being largely volunteer run and having very different goals) which leave us with a lot of unknowns.

To give an example of the kind of structure we're thinking of (by no means final, there hasn't been any broad agreement on a new structure yet):

We have the relevant pieces in place to form an assembly (everyone listed on https://postmarketos.org/team/ ) which could then democratically form teams and delegate responsibilities to them (e.g. finance/budget, technical policy-making, maintainers for various OS components).

The assembly would then also be responsible for deciding on focus areas and long term goals for the project (e.g. improving reliability, building a production-ready immutable version of the distro)

We could then form working groups to enable cross-team collaboration to move towards our specific goals.

Currently we lack a lot of understanding of the potential implications of something like this, how we can ensure the project doesn't get hijacked, that we don't drift too far from our mission statement, etc etc...

If you have a background in sociology and/or relevant experience from other projects then I would love to reach out and be able to discuss this in more detail!

#decentralization #opensource #freesoftware #foss

Signal boosting once more! Let's give it up for @jadehopepunk who gave this great talk recently 🎉

Neighbourhood-First Software: the open web without expecting everyone to self-host

https://tv.lumbung.space/w/nzuB248U2LQA1LCn7vYmER

It's fresh off the re-uploaded with consent presses over on @coopcloud@tv.lumbung.space.

This proposal for Neighbourhood-First Software is a wonderful tapestry of ideas, fed by a concrete bottom-up practice of self-organisation.

It weaves threads between @p2panda, #permacomputing, Co-op Cloud and more.

An inspiring and recommended watch 😻

Moar links:

- https://jade.hopepunk.me
- https://lores.tech.
- https://www.merri-bek.tech

-- d1

#Persona leak continued

Integration with Government Systems: The platform is capable of filing Suspicious Activity Reports (#SARs) directly to #FinCEN (U.S. Treasury) and #FINTRAC (Canada), and integrates with blockchain analytics tools like #Chainalysis to monitor cryptocurrency addresses.

Suspicious Checks: Some checks, like "SelfieSuspiciousEntityDetection" and "SelfiePoseRepeatedDetection", lack clear definitions of what constitutes a "suspicious" face or repeated pose, raising concerns about bias and opacity.

This is a big deal. I’ve been telling y’all that age verification was just a way to gather intelligence.

https://www.therage.co/persona-age-verification/

@xgranade
Here's an excellent article by @tante criticising that broader rhetorical point: https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/

It's really long, but totally worth the time IMO.

Somewhat tangentially, the backlash on the fedi along the lines of "Cory considered bad now" prompted tante to write a followup article which really gets one thinking: https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/on-alliances/

I recommend reading both.

oh good, the “you’re just doing purity culture” thing is already taking hold over on bluesky

so the line is now supposed to be that local LLMs are good and moral and SaaS LLMs are bad, when local LLMs come from the same fucked system that’s also actively making it impossible to buy computing hardware powerful enough to run even a shitty local LLM? is that about right? I’m supposed to clap cause someone with money is running a plagiarism machine but slower and shittier on their desktop?

i knew the archive. today guy was weird but i didn't realise he was a frothing nutter https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-archive-today-after-site-executed-ddos-and-altered-web-captures/

annoying it's so often the only practical option

Anyone who is about to complete, or already has completed, an age-verification or identity-verification process online should read this short article.

Especially if it's on LinkedIn or Discord.

"I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Actually Handed Over." by @thelocalstack

https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

And added to the directory (https://the-counterforce.org/directory), The Crowbar Hotel, a new blog/site for tape reviews. Send them your tapes! Subscribe to their RSS feed!

https://thecrowbarhotel.com/

As always if you know about punk websites (blogs, archives, online zines, etc) that we are missing in our directory, please send them in!