Notices by AJ Sadauskas (ajsadauskas@social.vivaldi.net)

@LanguageMan1 By "our country", I take it you mean the US?

If so, I'm assuming you're familiar with the fact that Australia has agreed to purchase a fleet of 8 nuclear submarines at a cost of around A$368 billion: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/14/aukus-nuclear-submarines-australia-commits-substantial-funds-into-expanding-us-shipbuilding-capacity

That's a massive amount of public money.

And it's predicated on the fact that the US will supply the submarines as promised.

And that the purchase is predicated on an assumption that the US will take military action if an authoritarian state (China) attacks a liberal democracy (Taiwan).

And that the US will honour its commitments to another ally and liberal democracy (Australia).

Given Trump's proven unwillingness to back a liberal democracy (Ukraine) against an authoritarian state (Russia), support for Taiwan in the event of sn Invasion looks less likely.

That's a lot of uncertainty for a A$368 billion defence contract.

The whole premise of the AUKUS deal is that Australia would act as a proxy for the US and UK, should China ever invade Taiwan.

To fill that role, Australia needed long-range submarines. Which would be purchased at Australia's expense.

But the Trump Administration has so far shown it will side with authoritarian regimes and parties over liberal democratic governments.

Most notably, in Ukraine and in tariff policy.

It raises the fundamental question: Would the US come to the aid of Taiwan if it were invaded by an authoritarian state (like China)?

If the answer is no, then fundamentally AUKUS is dead in the water.

Here's a very fundamental question about #AUKUS: https://nickcohen.substack.com/p/trumps-true-enemy-isnt-china-or-russia #auspol

"Does anyone seriously believe that an America that won’t defend Ukraine will go to war to defend Taiwan."

@Frantasaur @cwebber Option A, Palantir staff are already replacing sacked government workers: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-palantir-chief-information-officers-government/

@cwebber Reading through this executive order, it's clear that Elon and Don either:

a) Do not intend for a Democrat to even hold the presidency again, or at the very least
b) Have executed this power grab without considering the possibility of a Democrat in the White House in the future.

I say this, because can you seriously imagine that the Republicans would've been happy with an EO giving this much power to Obama or Biden?

In these tumultuous times, it's worth taking a moment to read this short biography of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/appeasement-and-peace-our-time

Chamberlain is best known for a policy he called "peace in our time", but has since become known as appeasement.

In 1938, Chamberlain secured a deal with Hitler that saw Czechoslovakia cede a portion of its territory, known as the Sudetenland to Germany.

In return, Hitler agreed that he would have no further territorial ambitions.

By March 15, 1939, German troops had seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. And by September they had invaded Poland.

In 2025, there's no shortage of Neville Chamberlains on the world stage willing to give up the Sudetenland to appease the likes of Trump, Putin, and Musk.

It didn't work for Chamberlain then.

It won't work now.

#Musk #Trump #Putin #history #USpol

@dansup The 503s were Pixelfed related?

If you want to push back against Trump's extreme acts, there's often a long game as well as a short game to be played.

The Heritage Foundation's strategy seems to be to try to ram through radical changes as quickly as possible.

The hope is that by doing a number of extreme acts in a short space of time, the public and the media will be overwhelmed.

And, with a constant bombardment, the public and media will move on to the latest outage, forgetting what came before.

Meanwhile, many major corporations have gone all-in on replacing diversity, equity, and inclusion with prejudice, cronyism, and nepotism.

They include McDonald's, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Meta, Ford, Disney, Google, GM, GE, Pepsi, Intel, PayPal, Chipotle, Comcast, 3M, Regeneron, and Philip Morris. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5288947/trump-dei-disney-pepsi-diversity

They hope much if the public will move on quickly to the next Trump outrage, and forget about their complicity.

But.

What if the public chooses not to?

What if, in 6 months, in 12 months, in 2 years, their corporations are still called Trump collaborators and white supremists?

What if there's protests against them in 6 months? If blog and social media posts still refer to this in 2 years?

If their IWD LinkedIn posts get 100 angry replies?

If the backlash to their complicity doesn't go away quickly, what would they do?

@ben I had a look at ProPublica's list and counted just four (4) women.

Two of them are listed as HR or "anti-DEI" hiring consultants.

Another, serving as a spokesperson, is Stephen Miller's wife:
https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/

All the rest are men.

And, with around three to four exceptions, they're white men.

Also, almost everyone on the list is connected to either Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.

Which goes to show, once again, the opposite of diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't meritocracy.

It's prejudice, nepotism, and cronyism.

People are shocked at how quickly many US companies dropped their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. They shouldn't be.

Corporations like (US) Target and McDonald's were never "woke".

There was no deep commitment to end racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic discrimination in their workplaces.

Just take a look at the official bios of the boards and executives of these corporations.

Still overwhelmingly intergenerationally wealthy. Overwhelmingly white. Overwhelmingly male.

Black Americans are around 14% of the US population. Just 8 Fortune 500 CEOs—1.6%—are Black: https://fortune.com/2024/02/09/black-ceos-fortune-500-high-workplace-diversity/

The millionaire (usually white) CEOs who run corporations, and the intergenerationally wealthy billionaires who own them, didn't suddenly develop a sense of an enlightened self-interest.

It was all just for show.

It was always just for show.

It was always public relations propaganda.

No, they don't want meritocracy. And the opposite of DEI isn't meritocracy. The opposite of DEI is prejudice, nepotism, and cronyism.

As soon as they thought they could get away with it, they switched back.

Because prejudice, nepotism, and cronyism works well for the ruling class.

Corporations are not your friend.

Corporations are not your ally.

Corporations exist to extend the power and wealth of the ruling class.

@dansup I love your work. Genuine question: Where do you find the time?

@bhaugen @yunohost @_elena @writefreely @ajsadauskas@blog.sadauskas.id.au It looks like there's two places in the settings that you need to change.

First, in the top right menu, go to customize, make sure publicity is set to unlisted, and then go to Updates and make sure the Federation checkbox is switched on.

Once you're in customize, if you have admin access, go to the WriteFreely menu at the top right, select Admin Dashboard, and then Settings. (If you're on WriteAs, this menu might not be visible?)

On this page, there's a checkbox marked Federation. Make sure it's on, and click save settings.

The other thing you can try is go to one of your blog posts. Click on the date, so it's just that blog post. Copy the URL and paste it into Mastodon and see if it appears.

So I spent part of today trying to set up an NFS mount on an Ubuntu server earlier today, and kept running into problems.

Fortunately, I found out what was causing the issue.

To hopefully save someone else some trouble, I want to share what I discovered in case anyone else runs into the same issue.

My first step was to run the command "sudo apt nfs-kernal-server" on the Linux server.

I kept getting the error message "Unable to locate package nfs-kernal-server".

I tried a bunch of things. Checking repositories. Checking router settings. Checking firewalls. Nothing seemed to work!

Then I noticed the source of my troubles.

Turns out the command I was looking for was "sudo apt nfs-kernel-server". With an "e" in kernel.

So what does it mean if you run into this same issue?

Probably that you grew up with a Commodore 64 or an Amiga as your first computer.

#Amiga #Linux #SysAdmin #Commodore #RetroComputer #RetroComputing #C64 #Ubuntu

Anyone here use #WriteFreely?

I've just set up a self-hosted WriteFreely blog as a first experiment with self-hosting instances and using @yunohost (huge thanks to @_elena for your tips! 🥰)

At least from initial setup, it looks like only the first line of the post and a link is pulling across to Mastodon.

Is there any way to make the full post text visible on Mastodon?

I can see who's following the blog, but not any comments. Any way to turn on notifications for this?

Also, is there any way to follow an account from WriteFreely? (I'm interested, because it would in theory allow me to follow BridgyFed, and make the posts visible on BlueSky.)

Are these limitations of the platform? Or is there a setting somewhere I missed?

#Fediverse #SelfHosting #FediHelp

@mekkaokereke I made a similar point on the other app. (Not Elon's. The butterfly one.)

"Gees, how will we ever learn the intent behind Elon's "unusual gesture".

"If only he did something that made it clear.

"Like financially backing a politician who signed executive orders revoking human rights for trans people, and attempted to end birthright citizenship, on that the exact same day."

@freemo @mastodonmigration @dansup To my own feed.

@freemo @mastodonmigration @dansup I can personally confirm thst "this user" — i.e. me — only attempted to post it once.

As a regular Facebook post.

I've documented what happened in greater depth elsewhere.

But basically there was another user who posted that they had tried to post a link to Pixelfed on Facebook and were blocked.

To verify their claim, I tried writing a simple post on my newsfeed asking "Anyone here use Pixelfed?" with a link to Pixelfed dot social.

My last interaction on the site was in July 2024, so definitely no spamming in terms of volume.

Within 3 seconds, I got an automated response.

Jason Koebler from 404 Media tried the same thing, and got the same result: https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed/

A number of other tech news sites, including Engadget, began running the story: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-admits-it-deleted-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed-194624098.html

At this point, Meta acknowledged it had been blocking links to Pixelfed "by mistake". It no longer seems to be doing it 😊

Some would say Mark Zuckerberg's actions this week accomplished little of value.

But I'd disagree.

Just look at the 138,900 cat photos that are now on Pixelfed 😹

#cats #Pixelfed #Meta

@mekkaokereke Something utterly appalling about America that I learnt in the past week.

Yes, it's a tangent, but it has everything to do with your core point.

Many of the firefighters that have been battling the bushfires in Los Angeles these past few days are prison inmates: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rwdjwglx2o

"Nearly 1,000 incarcerated men and women have joined the frontlines in a battle against record-breaking wildfires burning across southern California.

"The number deployed - now 939 - are part of a long-running volunteer programme led by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

"The state pays inmates a daily wage between $5.80 and $10.24 (£4.75 and £8.38), and an additional $1 per day when assigned to active emergencies."

In the richest country on Earth, making inmates put their lives at risk fighting bushfires for US$5.80 an hour + US$1 a day?!

Genuine question: How do you allow that to happen?!

And in the supposedly liberal state of California!

As a foreigner, with all the crazy stuff that's happened in America recently, that managed to shock me.

In good conscience, how do you allow your nation's prison–industrial complex to get that bad?

And that's just one manifestation of it!

Any Democrat who calls themselves a "liberal" and enables it should hang their head in shame.

@kallekn @osma @pixelfed Over the past day or so, there's been a massive number of people migrating from Instagram to Pixelfed.social for Zuck-related reasons.

Earlier today, it was particularly bad, because many were trying to pull across their Instagram posts and videos at the same time.

You can probably imagine how thousands of people suddenly trying to upload hundreds of megabytes of photos and videos at the same time isn't great for server capacity.

@dansup temporarily switched off file migration and, at one point, federation to keep the site online.

It seems to have stabilised a little, but it's still intermittently patchy.

Most of the first-time users are signing up at the main instance, so Pixelfed.Social is likely to be a bit wobbly where other instances aren't.

Hopefully in the coming days, as more server capacity comes online, those issues settle down...