Notices by Beardy Star Stuff 🏴🌹🇵🇸 (dennyhenke@social.coop)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116034944078221097

- If you're locked in to Amazon with previous media purchases commit to no additional purchases. No more.
- Otherwise, delete your Amazon account. You can get their stuff elsewhere.
- Stop using Google's browser, search, services. Delete your account if possible.
- Stop using Microsoft's services services. Delete your account if possible.

Commit to getting out of these services. Stop using them, stop giving them your money.

#Genocide #BOYCOTT #Google #Microsoft #Amazon #Technology #Tech

One of my local volunteer projects is the library's website which I'm updating this morning as Cosmo waits for second breakfast.

Happily using #FreeSoftware: ghostwriter for markdown conversion to html. Then I'll use Kate to edit a couple html files then upload with Filezilla. #GNU #Linux @linuxmint and the Cinnamon DE. All running on a 2018 #Thinkpad bought for $250 on Ebay.

No need for new/expensive hardware from #apple.
No #malware from #Microsoft or #google
#UpCycle #FOSS #Tech

@lxo @benjamim @briar @Em0nM4stodon

So, don't use any mobile phone by any manufacturer because it is 100% certain that it is compromised from the factory? Or is there some process to make one secure? What would you recommend as a solution? Is there a solution for a "normal user" who does not have deep knowledge of this?

@lxo @benjamim @briar @Em0nM4stodon

No, I get that. You're suggesting that Signal cannot protect if the phone, mine or the recipient's is compromised. Agreed. In that case not much can protect the communications. That's not a fault or flaw with Signal.

The vast majority of people's phones have not been compromised and in those cases Signal's encryption is what is needed and can be trusted. Your original point isn't very helpful given that fact.

@lxo @benjamim @briar @Em0nM4stodon

I don't think you're talking about Signal. Or, if you are, it seems like you do not understand how Signal works. You can read more about it at the link attached.

As long as my device is physically secure and the person/device I am communicating with has a secured device, the Feds cannot access the communication. End-to-end encryption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

@lxo @benjamim @briar @Em0nM4stodon

The people in Minneapolis have been using Signal daily to coordinate their efforts on the streets to protect each other against ICE. I think they would say that it's been very good and useful in their self defense efforts in recent weeks.

The fact that Signal uses AWS doesn't negate the usefulness of the app. The communications are encrypted. The only exploit is a FED getting my unlocked device or targeting me with Zero click malware.

@benjamim @briar @Em0nM4stodon

Yes, but your comment and others in this thread seem to be missing the point that the alternatives to Signal are not easily adoptable. In the current moment, people organizing against #ICE, we need something people can actually sign-up for and use.

This isn't about the most pure, ideal selfhosted messaging that nerds might love. This is about getting non-tech people who are fighting ICE on the streets set-up to use a cross platform, encrypted messaging app.

The folks in Portland Maine are on Fire! Rowdy with non stop horn honking and fantastic speakers. Huge crowd.

#ICE #GeneralStrike #Resist
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_iT6WgWxFrE

You know, it's a good and very strange thing to hear Stephen Colbert have a conversation with a guest who is a scholar of non-violent civil resistance and that the discussion would include advocacy of the #GeneralStrike.

🤯❤️😃

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N7MgLMzsnmE

RE: https://mastodon.social/@WarnerCrocker/115940829672022950

YES. Read Warner's post. This is something I've also been writing about for a very long time. Until we fully reckon with the historical foundations of the United States we will not be free. Our nation is still bound to #genocide, land theft, #settlercolonialism, slavery and violent international interventions. We cannot pretend otherwise. We cannot ignore the fundamental truths of this nation.

If we want #freedom and #justice, we must start with the #truth.
#democracy #classwar #capitalism

@WarnerCrocker
Thank you for writing this!

@WarnerCrocker It seems there is manipulation all around. That the flip side of the "mob" is the steadfastness of the more comfortable, the middle and upper middle class of folks that are fairly comfortable. Those that may have complaints with the system but don't want to rock the boat because they are comfortable enough. Maybe they vote, maybe they don't. But they most assuredly root for their favorite sports team, watch their sitcoms, scroll instagram.

The buffer, the ballast.

@WarnerCrocker I wonder, how much of their rage is a common and justified rage?

I've been living with a simmering rage since the early 1990s when I began exploring beyond what I'd been told about the history of this hemisphere and the US in particular. I was 23ish years old when I began to realize that the America I thought I grew up in was largely a fabrication created by the wealthy in a class war.

It seems to me the root of fascism is this deception designed to obscure class conflict.

@SearingTruth @WarnerCrocker
I've got a thread going at the moment on Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and I'm curious if either of you have read it?

It seems to me that any notion of the Founders as seekers of justice and democracy plays into a very long series of lies. A story that is only half truth.

The details of their plans indicates that they never intended freedom or democracy but control of the poor and working people that they thought of as dumb masses.

@WarnerCrocker Thanks for the mention Warner!

2025 End of year personal computing check-in

I've written quite a bit over the past 11 months about flipping the table on my personal computing. All very unexpected but what a relief to have done it. And also very satisfying to know that my computing now fits my personal ethics in a way that it did not before.

#Permacomputing #GNU #Linux #FreeSoftware #FOSS #Apple #Computing #Tech #Technology #Privacy #Resist #Capitalism #Fascism

https://beardystarstuff.net/posts/2025-12-26.html

@evan Proton Docs more than any of the above.

Stories like this are yet another reason to pull your data from the cloud/ID services provided by #Apple, #Microsoft, #Google. You think you're fine, that it won't happen to you. Until it does.

It's possible to have your own fully synced local "cloud" for files. I have an iPad, Mac, and two computers running GNU/Linux with the same files thanks to Syncthing. All in the background and backed up locally to external drives.

Fully private and secure.

#BigTech #Capitalism

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

@WarnerCrocker
We've crossed over to true dystopian fascism. Not quite 1984 but well on the way. From stationary cameras to "law enforcement"/ICE with mobile recording to phone carriers logging the movement of phones and calls and finally the widespread installation of apps, we've stepped into something that will likely leapfrog 1984 thanks to the technology being used. Perhaps already has.

But we DO have control over our own devices and can actually protect ourselves if we make the EFFORT

As the year closes I've made a lot of progress in recovering my online #privacy. I'm under no illusion that I've achieved complete anonymity online but nor am I cooperating with the full-time corporate/government #surveillance and invasive data collection that I was allowing previously. I see no reason to disrespect myself in that way nor a reason to give them an inch.

Protecting our privacy is the same as defending our #freedom, there is no end to the process.

https://beardystarstuff.net/posts/2025-11-21.html