Signal is one of the most important anticapitalist tools we have right now. It's FLOSS, free to use, privacy-preserving, and run by a (real - looking at you Mozilla) nonprofit. But that doesn't reduce the bills Signal has to pay to make the service work: https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

I know several people here have issues with Signal's centralized nature, but it's the gold standard in encrypted messaging for a reason. Go donate if you can - we all deserve privacy.

'Science' is not neutral because 'science' is conducted by humans and humans have biases, period. The good thing about science is *not* that it's neutral but that it provides a mechanism for accountability.

As long as you have humans in the equation (and *yes*, that includes humans training AIs, motherfuckers), there *will* be bias. There *will* be narrative selection. And y'all should think a *lot* before unquestioningly using it to shut down trans and nb requests for inclusivity.

As a cis man speaking to cis people everywhere, we *have* to normalize asking for pronouns and not assuming. It's a small way in which we can make the world safer for our trans, non-binary, gender-nonconforming, etc comrades.

I know it might feel weird at first, but part of it is also retraining *yourself* not to assume, and to get rid of the internalized assumption that we can guess/infer someone's gender and pronouns based on how they look.

Latin American countries are showing more backbone than the Democratic Party right now.

@alcinnz I've focused on getting repairable tech whenever possible and investing in an iFixIt kit :)

FLOSS is essential to a functioning democracy. Nonprofit media is essential to a functioning democracy. Academic research is essential to a functioning democracy. Unions are essential to a functioning democracy.

All of these are harder to fund than the oligarchic counterparts: proprietary software, for-profit media, billionaire-owned think tanks, etc. These institutions will take a hit over the next 4 years (hopefully not longer), but we will have to rally to save them.

1/?

@Infoseepage @protonprivacy FWIW, as someone who went to Caltech (undergrad), it's absolutely possible to be *completely* unaware of the outside world while there. It started to change a bit while I was there, but it's amazing how isolated Tech is, especially wrt sociopolitical context.

@protonprivacy There are two ways to read the fact that 88 appears (in binary) in Andy's Reddit handle:
1. He left a subtle clue for Nazi nerds.
2. He knew 88 would look bad and used binary to avoid using 88.

Frankly, it's disturbing that I don't know which explanation to believe at this point. Proton's users are (heavily?) skewed towards nerds, so 101100 was bound to get decoded soon enough. Was it just for plausible deniability?

@protonprivacy @Infoseepage

@Mastodon, @pixelfed, and others need to be thinking of a concrete way to take on AI crawlers. Not only b/c tons of people on here would like to not be scraped by AI bots, but also because not doing anything is going to lead to huge increases in the amount of resources needed to run a Mastodon or Pixelfed (or other) server, leading to consolidation, increased maintenance costs, etc.

@teleclimber @bentsai Any minimalist launcher helps with this (I use KISS launcher)

@protonprivacy I have one question: at what cost? Human rights, gay rights, women's rights, trans rights, immigrant rights, and so much more.

The GOP *is* the party of billionaires (look at donors, Project 2025, etc). The fact that a stopped clock might give the right time is mostly irrelevant if that same clock pushes for all other clocks to stop as well (I know, bad analogy, but work with me here).

That doesn't mean I like Dems - they're feckless *b/c* they are rolling over to Trump.

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@polarity @zeyus Ardour *feels* professional and polished. That didn't come from nowhere. And you might say "Well, companies should donate money and resources", but that now gives them outsize influence over the project, which can often be a bad thing.

So yeah, I'm totally fine with people paying for builds of FLOSS software if the alternative is that the software doesn't have the resources it needs to take on proprietary software.

@polarity @zeyus It's easy to sit on the sidelines and throw stones, saying shit like Ardour isn't really "free", but...it preserves the four fundamental freedoms of free software while charging a nominal fee if people don't want to compile it themselves. I *appreciate* when software is monetarily free, but that's also not sustainable in the long-term if we want to build a suite of FLOSS tools that are competitive with proprietary options.

@polarity @zeyus I mean, they need money to actually develop shit. Because I get it for free through my distro, I setup a monthly donation to them.

Yeah, software costs money to develop, and maintain. Some go the unethical route by making it proprietary. Ardour has made their DAW open source and Linux users get it for free b/c distros put in the work to compile it (I donate to Debian as well).

The West has shown that colonialism and genocide are tolerated when they are perpetrated by someone considered part of "the West" (US, UK, and now Israel). It sucks because we *need* to stand up for human rights. *All* human rights.

@w3c The problem is that it is voluntary. It means that companies are free to ignore standards that they don't like :/

@Miro_Collas @palestine This is probably true *and* it does not absolve Israel of war crimes. This is probably true *and* it is being weaponized by pro-Israeli countries like the US to kill the case against Netenyahu.

I don't want to minimize assault and rape allegations just because it is being cynically exploited to kill another investigation.

Don't like fascism? Stop supporting companies that like it. It's not sufficient, but it's necessary.

Don't buy from Amazon. Don't buy from Whole Foods. Don't buy from Walmart. Close your Facebook/Instagram accounts (keep Messenger and WhatsApp if necessary - you can create a new Messenger-only account if needed). Close your Twitter account.

Boycotts work when they are widespread. This *is* doable, but it takes organizing.

Mission accomplished: 197/197! 🎉

https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/worldflags