"That's really bad, and you should all patch your system right now, before you finish reading this blog post."

How awesome is that!? I cannot wait until we start federating! I'm very happy to see actual engagement here, and seeing a community grow. This is too cool!

"Maybe these persona bots will be controlled by foreign actors. Maybe it'll be domestic political groups. Maybe it'll be the candidates themselves. Most likely, it'll be everybody. The most important lesson from the 2016 election about misinformation isn't that misinformation occurred; it is how cheap and easy misinforming people was. Future technological improvements will make it all even more affordable."

"Special Services Group, a company that sells surveillance tools to the FBI, DEA, ICE, and other US government agencies, has had its secret sales brochure published. Motherboard received the brochure as part of a FOIA request to the Irvine Police Department in California."

"Most proprietary relicensing businesses work as follows: a single codebase is produced by a for-profit company, which retains 100% control over all copyright in the software (either via an ©AA or a CLA). That codebase is offered as a gratis product to the marketplace, and the company invests substantial resources in marketing the software to users looking for FOSS solutions. The marketing department then engages in captious and unprincipled copyleft enforcement actions in an effort to “convert” those FOSS users into paying customers for proprietary licensing for the same codebase. (Occasionally, the company also offers additional proprietary add-ons, improvements, or security updates that are not available under the FOSS license — when used this way, the model is often specifically called “Open Core”.)"

Hey everyone, I had a bit of an interesting idea recently. We should have our own Libre Culture Lemmy Book and/or Film Club! The rules are quite simple. Any content we choose to discuss must be either in the public domain or must have a license that's approved for [free cultural works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_Free_Cultural_Works). Every three months, we vote on a new film or novel to read, or a collection of short stories that are about the length of a novel combined. Other media could be allowed as well. Downvoting suggestions isn't allowed, unless the suggested content is inappropriate. I can't wait to see how this'll go! Please let me know what you guys think of this idea, and let's begin voting in this comment section what we'd like to watch/read in March!

"But a library gives old news a new life, not a commercial life, but a life that encourages reflection, perspective, critique, analysis. In a word– “History”. The library keeps the former “news” and offers it in new ways in a new framing, with new tools– not just flip flip flip. It can be quoted, placed side by side with other publisher’s news and enable researchers to inject commentary. This capture, representation, searching, rethinking is not a crime– it is thought, it is memory and our history– it builds to become our culture. It has been supported, nurtured, taught. But the library is in danger in our digital world. In print, one could keep what one had read. In digital that is harder technically, and publishers are specifically making it harder. Technical enforcement measures and laws are making remembering difficult, and worse, a crime."

"@yausername put much effort into adding a fourth service to NewPipe: PeerTube. In case you do not know PeerTube, one can describe it as an open source decentralized video streaming platform. NewPipe supports most of PeerTubes native features like searching, playing and downloading videos or reading comments. There is one structural point which differs PeerTube from all other so far supported services. Because PeerTube is decentralized, there are houndreds of instances available in the fediverse. We choose to use FramaTube as default instance, because the main organization behind PeerTube is the software developer Framasoft. NewPipe allows you to select the instances you like and add them to your personal list. You can switch between them seamlessly."

"Software restrictions, analogous to the kinds of restrictions our main character Wendell runs into as a user of the promising ShoeTool, are detrimental to our freedom, creativity, and jobs. We hope watching Wendell's frustrations will shake things up in many homes and help more people understand. People have been looking to the FSF for almost thirty-five years for leadership, positive innovation, and being the uncompromising defender of free software. We want to keep producing high quality visuals that are informative and engaging, but they cost money. This is the biggest fundraising time of the year, and we still have a long way to go if we are to meet our goal of 600 new associate members. Make a donation or become a member today. Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a liberated 2020! Sincerely, The Free Software Foundation Zoë, Andrew, Craig, Dana, Dawn, Donald, Greg, Ian, Jeanne, John H., John S., Matt, Michael, and Ruben"

"As noted by writer Matt Beard in The Guardian, the latest iteration of teaching kids to accept constant surveillance via holiday tradition is the Elf on the Shelf, a cheerful little snitch whom parents hide in different spots every day in the house. The idea is, the Elf watches what kids are up to, and if they call their little sister a name or steal a cookie from the cookie jar, the friendly household spy will tattle to Santa, who will add them to the "naughty" list. Beware! We agree with Beard that this cutesy, innocent-seeming "tradition" (which actually only dates back to 2005!) communicates to children that someone is always watching them, and that moreover, this is a perfectly normal thing. This should give us pause, and cause us to think carefully about what kind of messages we are sending in our behavior at home and with friends."

:)

# Disclaimer * The “BraveHeart” Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely for developer and early adopter. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience and an interest in Linux-on-phone. * The “BraveHeart” Edition PinePhone does not come with default OS build installed, user needs to install their owns favorite build. Most of the OS builds are still in beta stage. * Estimate dispatch in late December 2019/early January 2020

"In 2012, when we announced the first certification, we hosted information about the program and retailers as a simple page on the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Web site. With only one retailer selling one device, this was certainly satisfactory. As the program grew, we added each new device chronologically to that page, highlighting the newest certifications. We are now in a place where eight different retailers have gained nearly fifty certifications, including the recently announced Talos II and Talos II Lite mainboards from Raptor Computing Systems, LLC. With so many devices available, across so many different device categories, it was getting more difficult for users to find what they were looking for in just a plain chronological list. Thus we are proud to announce we're launching a new, stand-alone Web presence for RYF, capable of facilitating its continued expansion. Users can check out the new site at https://ryf.fsf.org. There, they can browse certifications by vendor and device type, and learn about the most recent certifications. Each device has its own page which directs users to the certification announcement, date of certification, and a link to the retailer site where they can purchase it. We hope that this update will make it even easier for users to find products they can trust from retailers dedicated to promoting freedom and privacy for everyone. With that said, there is always room for improvement, so we would love to hear your feedback about the new site. Here's what you can do to help: * Check out the new site at https://ryf.fsf.org and let us know what you think by sending an email to licensing@fsf.org. * Help spread awareness of the RYF program by sharing our RYF flyer with your friends and colleagues. * Buy certified products and encourage others to do so. * Encourage a retailer to certify a product by directing them to the RYF criteria page. * Support this work by donating or joining the FSF as an associate member." *https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/new-ryf-web-site-its-now-easier-to-support-companies-selling-devices-that-respect-your-freedom*

There are two Google products that I still use directly: maps and translate. I use maps because OSM data for my city is weak (I'm currently working on this) and there doesn't seem to be a good enough replacement for translate. That's where Apertium comes in! The issue is, translation data is sorely lacking. If any of you guys are bilingual, please give them a helping hand, and please contribute translations to Lemmy as well! Let's kick Google out of our lives!

Here's a question that popped into my head when thinking about cell phones. What's theoretically better, a pinephone, or an open spec dumbphone paired with an open spec PDA?

"Yasamin Mostofi asks us to imagine this scenario: police have video footage of a robbery. They suspect that one of the robbers is hiding in a house nearby. Can a pair of off-the-shelf Wi-Fi transceivers, located outside the house, look through the walls to see who’s inside? That’s easy to answer, since we’ve seen it done before."

"It was recently discovered that several thousand scientific articles could be invalid in their conclusions because scientists did not understand that Python’s glob.glob() does not return sorted results."

"The International Day against DRM (IDAD), organized yearly by the Defective by Design campaign, is promising to be an exciting day of protest against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). This year we are standing up for readers' rights against the restrictive behavior of DRM-encumbered textbooks and digital learning environments from groups like Pearson, and our protestors will collect at the Pearson Education offices in Boston on October 12th, 2019."

"As the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and the University Librarian, Emeritus at Harvard University, Darnton has long been a champion of broadening access to information. He also sees the value of making materials more widely available when it comes to his own research outputs. Darnton has made two of his books, which are both still in print, freely available online: Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Harvard University Press, l968) and The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, l775-l800 (Harvard University Press, l979). Several other of his titles are available to borrow electronically through the Internet Archive’s Open Library."

"Apple Inc on Wednesday removed an app that protestors in Hong Kong have used to track police movements, saying the app violated its rules because it was used to ambush police and by criminals who used it to victimize residents in areas with no law enforcement."

"Two speakers were censored at the Australian Information Security Association's annual conference this week in Melbourne. Thomas Drake, former NSA employee and whistleblower, was scheduled to give a talk on the golden age of surveillance, both government and corporate. Suelette Dreyfus, lecturer at the University of Melbourne, was scheduled to give a talk on her work -- funded by the EU government -- on anonymous whistleblowing technologies like SecureDrop and how they reduce corruption in countries where that is a problem."

"We, the undersigned GNU maintainers and developers, owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Stallman for his decades of important work in the free software movement. Stallman tirelessly emphasized the importance of computer user freedom and laid the foundation for his vision to become a reality by starting the development of the GNU operating system. For that we are truly grateful. Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to. We believe that Richard Stallman cannot represent all of GNU. We think it is now time for GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project. The GNU Project we want to build is one that everyone can trust to defend their freedom."

One less non-libre platform.

Made a post about Lemmy to /r/lounge, which is exclusive to members with Reddit Premium. I got a weeks worth after getting Reddit gold!

I use RSS to keep myself in touch and to receive news as early as I can, which is very helpful to this sub since I can post it on here if anything interesting happens. The thing is, I'm not subscribed to a whole lot. What RSS feeds should I be subscribed to? What sort of projects are you guys interested in? Keep in mind that this community isn't just about free software, but about the creative commons, liberation of information, etc.

"The GNOME Foundation has been made aware of a lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC over patent 9,936,086. Rothschild allege that Shotwell, a free and open source personal photo manager infringes this patent. Neil McGovern, Executive Director for the GNOME Foundation says 'We have retained legal counsel and intend to vigorously defend against this baseless suit. Due to the ongoing litigation, we unfortunately cannot make any further comments at this time.' Updates to this case will be published on www.gnome.org."

"On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board of directors. The board will be conducting a search for a new president, beginning immediately. Further details of the search will be published on fsf.org. For questions, contact FSF executive director John Sullivan at johns@fsf.org."

"To the MIT community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. Richard Stallman"

"Pines and firs are dying across the Pacific Northwest, fires rage across the Amazon, it’s the hottest it’s ever been in Paris—climate change is impacting the whole planet, and things are not getting any better. You want to do something about climate change, but you’re not sure what."

"DoH means that Firefox will concentrate all DNS traffic on Cloudflare, and they send traffic from all their users to one entity. So what does that mean? It means people outside the US can now be fully tracked by US government: now some of you might wonder if this is actually in line with GDPR (The EU General Data Protection Regulation). It is indeed very questionable if DoH is rolled out as default, since users do NOT opt in, but have to opt out."

Post some of your favourite software/service/alternatives. For example, I've started using Red Reader now that Reddit requires me to be signed in in order to display entire threads. Also, I got youtube-dl working on termux, an android app, via 'pkg install python' and then 'pip install youtube-dl'. What are your favourites and recent discoveries? Even if you think people have already heard of it, there's a possibility they haven't. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ten_thousand.png

"Hundreds of millions of phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts have been found online. The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam. But because the server wasn’t protected with a password, anyone could find and access the database."

"In July 2019, the forum for webcomic XKCD suffered a data breach that impacted 562k subscribers. The breached phpBB forum leaked usernames, email and IP addresses and passwords stored in MD5 phpBB3 format. The data was provided to HIBP by white hat security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies. Breach date: 1 July 2019 Date added to HIBP: 1 September 2019 Compromised accounts: 561,991 Compromised data: Email addresses, IP addresses, Passwords, Usernames"

An interesting video about the MPAA and censorship.

There's an instance running here: https://invidio.us/ Very handy and much preferred over YouTube.

"Stokes bequeathed her son Michael Metelits the entire television collection, with no instructions other than to donate it to a charity of his choice. After a stringent process of considering potential recipients, Metelits gave the collection to The Internet Archive one year after Stokes' death. Four shipping containers were required to move the collection cross-country to Internet Archive's headquarters in San Francisco,[2] a move which cost her estate $16,000.[8] It was the largest collection they had ever received.[10] The group agreed to digitize the volumes, a process which was expected to run fully on round-the-clock volunteers, costing $2 million and taking 20 digitizing machines several years to complete. As of November 2014, the project was still active.[2] A documentary about her life, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, was directed by Matt Wolf and premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.[11][12][13][14]"