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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • Quality journalism:

    Yesterday, we reported on actors using Russian IP addresses to breach the National Labor Relations Board immediately after DOGE engineers obtained “God-tier” access. According to whistleblower Daniel Berulis the intruders used newly created DOGE credentials and techniques “consistent with sophisticated Russian intelligence operations.”

    Shocking, if inexperienced, young idiots get to do whatever they want in critical systems, shits gonna hit the fan.

    Any IT system DOGE touched should be considered compromised, not because of “sophisticated” state agents, but because you’ve had those idiots touching it.

    Remember the first days of post-Musk twitter? Yeah, now imagine that with older, more brittle systems, way less experience in the staff, more AI slop, less time and way more god complex.

    Also, still waiting for the day those “journalists” will learn that an IPs geolocation does not have to be the actual source…





  • Take the following with a grain of salt, it depends on your specific setup, environment and preference, but might help you:

    Regarding system backups, and depending whether you need to run fedora, check out nixos, which takes a declarative file and builds your system based on that. Declarative immutable system, no moving parts, no breakage. If your system breaks, revert to a prior version and keep using what you’ve had before before retrying. Your backup is a git repo or whatever is keeping your handful of config files. Has been an absolute game changer for me, and the community and ecosystem around it is far beyond the point of quirky esoteric immutable distro.

    VSCode has a powerful feature that I’ve yet to see in another editor/IDE - remote development, and it works really, really well. Spin up a VM however you like (I’d recommend checking out Vagrant), and depending on how much you need to do in windows either use the windows box as a remote run target (just running your built artifact in windows), or as a remote development box (running everything in windows and using your Linux VSCode as a “Frontend” for everything else happening in windows). Both methods can be made to work seamlessly in vsc.

    Excel - again depending on your usage, you can try wine, you can use a VM, dual boot, M365 in browser, or a remote VM.




  • x1gma@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldKeep Pushing
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    2 months ago

    Because it’s always been like that. An enemy image unites, and allows for political agendas which wouldn’t be possible otherwise. China and Taiwan? Israel and Gaza? The middle east? Jugoslawia? Kosovo and Albania? The soviets, Hitler, the OG fascist Mussolini, and even they weren’t the first ones.

    Having an enemy helps unite people against them, and as long as the image of the enemy being present and being a danger is fed, inner conflicts matter way less, since the “danger” is the enemy.

    For America it’s an especially interesting case:

    • America spends ~900 billion dollars on military, which is as much as the next most spending 9 countries combined. Source. Fuck knows if that’s super accurate, it’s a fuckton. America’s main export good is war, so any enemy is a good enemy, and any war is a good war. Suddenly, the 66.5 billion spent on Ukraine since 2022 aren’t that much anymore.
    • The “commies” and the “reds” are an historic enemy, and have been for a significant time of America’s existence. America has existed for 249 years this year. The soviet union existed for 69 years, counting in the Russian Republic right before its 74 years. Right before that was the Russian empire, which existed for 196 years. The Russians, in some form, have been an enemy since basically forever.
    • A comparatively extremely dumb population on average at least in regard to the non-american world, in addition to intolerance of the “non-american way” of doing things and disinterest in other cultures.

    And since the average American already is used in thinking black and white with glorious freedom of two-party pseudo democracy, it’s even easier to get the enemy image going.

    For some variance, China can be used sometimes too.

    And before I get called a Russian bot, fuck Putin, fuck Trump, fuck Musk, and many other political figures having blood of many people on their hands.


  • It’s not about being dumb and expecting stuff for free but a general anger towards subscription based models. Fair models exist and are possible, but are a collateral of the general hate.

    Then, free alternatives exist, and believe it or not, some people do not have a tiny monthly fee they could spare or do not want to pay for something that a free alternative exists.

    Threema tried exactly that, and failed comically.



  • I get both your and his point, I personally just disagree, because I do not think that closing your eyes and ignoring it prevents people from being “recruited”.

    In my opinion, this attempt and attitude has given the AfD in Germany (and probably several others) the space to grow, paired with a black and white mentality: the general attitude is mostly - either you vote left, or you’re a nazi, end of discussion. There is no longer a political spectrum in discussions, it’s us or them, left or right, normal or nazi, and I think that this is very, very bad. I think that a democracy should represent everyone, since what makes us a free and democratic state is that everyone is part of it, is represented, and has his freedom of thought, speech and beliefs. Making “having thoughts aligning with the right” a taboo only makes it more interesting, especially for younger people, and given that pretty much every Internet community also generates echo chambers (one or many), it makes it more attractive to potentially end up in one, where those people will realize that they can talk openly here, which makes them more susceptible to further radicalization. And to make it clear - violence of any kind is not included in the freedom, neither by the right, nor by the left.

    Instead of focusing on how to prevent people from shifting right, which you simply can’t, I think we should focus on how we can prevent some people from shifting right, and some people from shifting further right, which is perfectly achievable by proper education, applying a spectrum of views and leaving space where more people do not feel left out.

    Part of a left and democratic mindset is that all people are made and worth equal, tolerance, and an open mind. In the left versus right discussion there are more than just leftists, nazis, and nazi sympathizers. There are people who may be just not smart enough to figure out that they are just caught by polemic, populism and propaganda, or maybe who don’t even know what they are getting into. There are people who are just protest voting. Hell, even the deepest far-right nazi hellhole has or had people who are trying to leave it.

    Sure, the actual nazis and hardliners will applaud that Musk picture and see and use it as confirmation and propaganda, and you won’t be able to influence them otherwise with that. All other groups in between can be influenced though, even though in both directions.

    Specifically for Musk - his general public image has shifted very much from a technological and financial genius to a narcissist right hardliner multimillionaire, because of his actions and people publicly exposing and talking about them, and still he has a big cult of supporters who’ll be on his side till the end. And honestly? That’s fine, but I personally am very happy to see the general shift.


  • Don’t you see AfD on the rise there? The AfD is not only rising because of Nazi sympathy, but also because of protest voters, a literal fuckton of drama around pretty much every other significant party, too many deaths being instrumentalized, and a disfunctional current government. Latest opinion poll: https://dawum.de/Bundestag/ - so “only” 20% support them.

    Most of the people seeing this isn’t going to know the context (i.e. this is a protest). If you strip away the context, this is just a blatant public display of the fascist salute, which many there have wanted to do for so long but couldn’t because they feared the consequences. This could very well embolden them.

    Even german news are full of the orange idiot and his millionaire friends doing their escapades, and you seem to imagine most of the german population sitting there applauding him? “Blatant displays of the fascist salute” are NOT what many here want to do, but what most would like to do without consequences is punching a Nazi straight to their face.

    If you haven’t realized, many european governments shifted right because the populism of those parties exploited and used the political tensions and the accumulated anger for the past failures of many left and green hardliners very well.

    Germans are not more right or have more Nazis than many other European states, and given the hereditary guilt, less than many.



  • Why are we giving this person their stage again? How probable is it that the instance admins of the like 15 instances they have accounts on will all collectively ban him? It’s just your average nazi spammer on the internet. You’ve read that “bio” this person has. Even if they get banned, they’ll come back just on principle. Just block him like any sane person would do, leave him shadow banned like that with his nazi friends, and call it a day.


  • So, you mean using a proprietary vendor to operate something binds you to that vendor? Congratulations, you’ve just discovered vendor lock-in.

    “Obfuscating the environment” is also an absolutely unhinged claim, what even is that supposed to mean?

    And again, Automattic is NOT in the right. What Automattic did was break license terms, attempt to extort, steal code, and light their whole brand, company, ecosystem and community on fire. Matt spit in the faces of his open source community (and open source in general), and every single person dependent on WordPress losing their job because of the shift he’s causing will be blood on his hands personally. Even if WP Engine was questionably morally or ethically, they did play by the laws and the license terms. Matt went on a mental breakdown and additionally to his unethical behavior broke several laws on that journey, which is exactly why he is losing the lawsuit. Matt and Automattic are NOT in the right.





  • That whole blog post is so full of salt, that it really hurts to read.

    Still going on about the “imbalance of the contributions”, well that’s open source for you - you don’t get to control who contributes how much, all you can do is ask nicely, and provide a good experience for contributors. Acting like a lunatic does not do that.

    legal attacks started by WP Engine

    Of course they did after the witch-hunt and the absolutely illegal, unethical and plain ridiculous behavior of Automattic. The counter they did, the whole ACF takeover and the slandering are a lawsuit handed on a plate.

    The way “community” is quoted in that article for those who dared to disagree.

    This legal action diverts significant time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting WordPress’s growth and health.

    Yeah, as a developer I also hate when lawsuits are stopping me from working. He had no problem letting go of nearly 10% of his staff with their “alignment offer” to get rid of people who again dared to disagree, but the legal action is diverting resources now.

    But the whole “Focused on the Future” paragraph is going full mask off:

    Before, they said that resources will be reallocated to “for-profit projects within Automattic”, and

    We will redirect our energy toward projects that can fortify WordPress for the long term

    It’s only a matter of time another hostile takeover will take place, and Matt will attempt to go full for-profit on WordPress itself.

    We’re excited to return to active contributions to WordPress core, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse, and WordPress.org when the legal attacks have stopped.

    Full on extortion. Stop the lawsuit or we won’t contribute.

    Honestly, if I’d be dependent on WordPress for my work, I’d not sleep well and start going into something else right fucking now. How are people that stupid, childish and entitled getting into such positions.



  • Matt never ceases to amaze with his smoothbrain decisions.

    The amount of effort this moron puts into his weird personal vendetta against WP engine, even after the court told him that he has nothing, which was actually his last chance to end this kinda gracefully, could’ve been used for so much better things.

    And he’s not only successfully kicking himself in the balls, he’s willing to throw so many years of community and project time and effort under the bus for it.

    Go on Matt, keep telling how much you’re only doing this for WordPress.