Notices by Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)

Eventually I found something that fixed it:
I deleted the VPN config from those two boxes, deleted them from the Blokada app, added them back there, downloaded the new VPN configs from there, and imported them into the boxes. Everything worked fine after that (indeed, I'm posting this message through the now-working VPN connection).
Has anybody else seen anything like this on Blokada in particular or wireguard in general? Any thoughts about potential causes?
(continued)

I use the #Blokada #wireguard #VPN on 5 devices: 4 #Linux boxes and an Android phone.
This morning, internet on two of the Linux boxes crapped out when connected to the VPN. TCP connections were taking ridiculously long or hanging completely. For example, I saw "time curl --silent https://cnn.com/" take over a minute with the VPN connected vs. a fraction of a second without. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the VPN didn't help. Neither did rebooting.
(continued)

Please point out one thing in this email which gives any indication of:
a) what Democrats are doing _now_, not in two years after the next congressional election, to resist the Trump administration's encroaching fascism; or
b) how Democrats are going to leverage future donations to defend democracy more successfully than they have leveraged past ones.
They get none of my money until they convince me they'll put it to good use.
#politics #USPol #DNC

I want to talk for a moment about how fucking useless and incompetent the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is and how much it pisses me off that these are the people who are supposed to be fighting for our future but instead seem to be fighting only to be allowed to keep grazing from the trough of political donations.
🧵
#politics #USPol

Five days ago (see earlier in the thread) I posted a fundraising email I received from the DNC, with Kamala Harris's name on it. I have my doubts about whether Harris had anything to do with this message other than maybe telling the DNC they could slap her name on it, but whatever.
Anyway, I clicked the unsubscribe link in that email. I filled out and submitted the unsubscribe form, and the page I then landed on said, "Thanks! We're removed you from our mailing list."
🧵

I also received an email confirming that I'd been unsubscribed. I want to call your attention to the Reply-To field in the email I received, because it speaks to the DNC's competence, or, more accurately, their incompetence. 😡
🧵

Anyway, despite my unsubscribing, they just spammed me again, five days later.
In addition to them spamming me five days after I unsubscribed, I also want to call your attention to:
* the fake sense of urgency strategy ("mid-month deadline") they're using to trigger people's animal brains and get them to donate, the same strategy that scammers use; and
* the little padlock icon in the upper right corner of the email which means absolutely nothing, another scammer strategy.
🧵

Let's be frank here: that's all the DNC is at this point. They're a scammer whose entire purpose for existing is to raise money from rubes that is then paid out to expensive consultants who advise candidates to keep using the same losing strategies that have allowed the Republicans to take over the country and really dig into the project of completely destroying government in the US.
It will be a cold day in hell before I donate a penny to the DNC.
🧵 /fin

This really rubs me the wrong way.
I'm donating to a charity through givebutter.com, and after I indicated that I wanted to make a one-time $180 donation, it popped up this prompt.
This boils down to, "If you agree to donate twice as much money as you said you wanted to, it'll have twice the impact!" which is tautological, but presented in a way which IMO is a dark pattern.
This is gross.
#GiveButter #charity #DarkPattern

Also, the amount of effort required on #GiveButter to just give them the amount of money you said you wanted to give them is offensive.
After clicking the "Keep my $180 one-time gift" button, it opened another pop-up which asked me if I wanted to give a "tip" to GiveButter and if I wanted to cover the processing costs of my donation. Both of these were checked by default! It took multiple not-entirely-obvious steps to undo them both.
Terrible user experience, would not recommend GiveButter.

P.S. You may have noticed that I'm not saying which organization I was donating to when I encountered this. It's a worthy org and in other contexts I would encourage people to join me in supporting them, but I'm not going to do that because of the negative experience donating through GiveButter. By treating donors poorly they're driving away donors.

P.P.S. When I made this donation this morning through #GiveButter, there was a checkbox on the form to indicate whether I wanted the target org to be able to contact me. I unchecked that checkbox. Nevertheless, I received an email from the org two hours later, at the email address I had given to GiveButter, which I'd never given to anyone else.
So in addition to my other complaints about GiveButter, I'm also pissed that they give organizations people's email addresses even when asked not to. 😡

This is fucking dystopian and we should all be fucking horrified that this shit is happening.
I've become kind of inured recently to horrifying, dystopian shit, and this still shocks me.
We aren't "at risk" of living in a police state. We _are_ living in a police state.
That's been true for BIPOC forever, and now it's catching up with the rest of us because we let it happen to them.
h/t @josephcox
#infosec #privacy #policeState
https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-is-building-a-massive-people-lookup-tool-leak-shows/

#macOS does this thing when you are using multiple monitors with different sizes: when you move a window from one monitor to another it resizes the window proportionally to match the dimensions of the target monitor.
I intensely despise this behavior and would very much like to turn it off, but I can't find any way to do that. Do you know if it exists and if so where it's hidden?
My preferred behavior would be to only resize dimensions where the window is wider or taller than the target monitor.

You know, I think tonight I'm going to go through our shopping list template with all our staples listed on it, cross off the perishable ones, go to Costco and the supermarket, and fill the minivan up with all the others.
I am not unaware of the privilege which allows us to do this.
I imagine we're going to be putting a lot of food into the community fridge in the coming months.
#politics #USPol #tariffs #supplyChain

(And I am also not unaware of the fact that my employer could decide at any point that thanks to the economic downturn my services are no longer required, at which point our economic privilege will quickly evaporate.)

This is just my Costco run, haven't done the supermarket yet. My goal is to have enough nonperishables in the house that we can make it three months without buying anything if we need to.

@trans_rescue (https://transrescue.org/) needs your financial support!
DONOR MATCH ALERT: If you donate to TR here, https://transrescue.org/donations/donate, in the next 24 hours and DM me your receipt I will match your donation, up to a total of US$1,000 in matches!
TR is a lean NGO that helps trans individuals and people from the broader queer community escape life-threatening situations in some of the world's most dangerous regions.
Please boost! :boostRequest:
#trans #mutualAid
1/2

Trans Rescue's life-saving efforts are astoundingly cost-effective: they move people to safety for, on average, only 2500€. But more people than ever need their help, and TR needs your financial support to continue its work. Due to lack of funds, TR is currently turning away people in need. Please help change that!
Again, you can donate at https://transrescue.org/donations/donate, and if you donate in the next 24 hours and DM me your receipt, I will match your donation up to a total of US$1,000 in matches.
2/2

We have our first donation! 15€, which is US$17.07 at the current exchange rate, so I now owe Trans Rescue $17.07 in matching donations.
Who's next?