secure anonymous access
A VPN doesn't provide this on its own. Nothing does.
"Better than a VPN" but it looks more like some decentralised social and content network. So not a replacement or alternative to a VPN in any way. It just preys on the people who already bought the "VPNs make you private online" marketing.
Looks like a silicon valley VC cash grab.
Genius level hot take right here.
/s
[citation needed]
Ah yes, the magazine of British aristocrats and capitalists is muh Ruzzian propaganduh now.
Clown take.
I use whichever editor is convienient at the moment and which I lile the UX of (Micro on a terminal, Pulsar on desktop, Markor on mobile), and commit the markdown files to a privately hosted git server (Forgejo). The git server is backed up regularly.
The editor doesn't matter too much as long as it doesn't have spyware and/or AI "features" like vscode.
When I'm on the go and need to read or write notes I have a clone of the repo on my phone, and if I absolutely need to pull/push to origin I connect via VPN.
I'm not sure how syncthing or similar work with merging different versions of files from different devices, so I've just stuck with git for that reason as well as version control (I make notes about homelab configs and issues so being able to go back is handy).
The USSR liberated Europe from fascism, and Europeans will never forgive them for it.
I explained MAID to a friend recently and they completely blew off the whole thing with impoverished people being forced into "choosing" death. "I assume it's only a few cases of that and besides, it's good that terminally ill people or people in massive chronic pain can choose to go on their own terms."
Liberalism is a death cult.
No. Fuck no.
Not even bothering to make an improvement in a person's living conditions, even while the means are available, and skipping directly to killing someone is evil.
An old piece of paper only has the power to stop Democrats.
This is always tricky. I don't think this is an exclusively liberal phenomemon, people are just biologically more inclined to trust people we know.
Drive one mile and be thankful Texans don't have to live under the tyranny of passenger rail existing in their state.
/s
Remember when the US and its EU lapdogs were crying about how Russia (and Putin personally) was using energy as a bargaining chip/leverage?
To nobody's surprise that was pure projection.
Only cause the official numbers are cooked.
We already saw that as soon as Biden was elected. Any bit of skepticism with regards to loyally following the US under Trump went away overnight, when everything went "back to normal" in the White House.
Trades like electrician, plumber, heating/cooling. Or any sort of manufacturing. Basically anything that produces a good or service people need.
In what way? For which use case? What threat models would exclude TP Link products?
What I meant to say was that these data/computing centers exist, so they will be used. If any efficiency gains are integrated into western LLMs, there will be more output from a given data center.
It's like what we see with gains in energy efficiency; instead of energy use being reduced, the thing is typically used more.
Frankfurt, Germany — Rising sick leave rates may be bad news for German companies at a time the economy is already ailing -- but for private eye Marcus Lentz, it has been a boon for his
You will be work and you will be happy, dammit.
Blaming the recession, at least in part, on working people taking sick days is so unaware I can't even put it into words.
I don't even think such surveillance of employees by a company is legal, but no company will get punished.
Deportation after one “like”—German cabinet proposes dictatorial deportation rules
The draft law is a serious attack on the basic democratic right to freedom of expression. A single “like" under a post that contradicts German foreign policy is enough for a deportation order.
I don't even have words for this right now.
Please excuse the trot publication, I didn't feel like looking for another English article.
TikTok Psyop
TikTok is once again under public scrutiny, but a much bigger issue is being swept under the rug: that it is increasingly controlled by the US national security state.
Not sure if this one has been posted in the last few weeks, but this follows up previous MintPress reporting on the links between western TikTok and the US military-intelligence apparatus. It was probably clear to us from the beginning, but the crusade against TikTok has been an entirely cynical ploy for the empire to gain even more control over the internet.
Previous articles:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Approved changes to German citizenship law
Der Bundestag hat eine Änderung des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts beschlossen. Einbürgerungen sollen künftig schneller möglich sein. Was genau ist noch geplant? Die Kernpunkte der Reform im Überblick.
German politicians have been discussing making applying for citizenship easier for a couple years now. Today the Bundestag (Parliament) approved the draft legislation, with two surprising new additions.
In applying for citizenship a person will now not only have to say they agree to and respect the German constitution (standard practice for gaining citizenship anywhere), an applicant will also have to agree to a statement "on Germany's special historical responsibility for the unjust Nazi rule and its consequences, especially for the protection of Jewish life." It's reasonable enough if taken literally, but we all know what this means in practice: Zionism is the law of the land. There could be an additional statement regarding the "illegalty of wars of aggression" required as well. If a person is found to have lied during the application or even behaves against such statements in the future, their newly gained German citizenship could be revoked.
To be fair, all of this is based on p
Dell Latitude Frustration
I have been having such a difficult time getting a 2018 Dell Latitude 7930 to run any Linux distro stably. Maybe there is something obvious I am missing or maybe it really is dying hardware that's the root cause of the issue.
The silly thing is I had a stable install of openSUSE Tumbleweed running for a few months but because I made some poor choices on disk partition when I installed it I was eventually backed into a corner where I had to wipe the SSD and install from scratch.
I since then have tried Tumbleweed again as well as Ubuntu, Mint, and finally Manjaro to no avail. The Debian based distros completely freeze at some point, either immediately upon login and loading the desktop or when running apt update. Tumbleweed gets a kernel panic within an hour or so, even though I changed kernel options to a previous known-good config. Now after quite a frustrating time installing Manjaro it freezes within an hour as well and the diagnostic light code indicates a CPU issue.
Strangely e
I also made a website
Back in October I found a really cool book containing the speeches delivered during a Marxist theoretical conference hosted by the SED in the DDR in 1983. In the meantime I have started to transcribe some of these speeches with the intent of sharing them here and with the international community of working people. There are three speeches up at the moment and I am working on more. There are 140 in the volume so a complete digitization may take some time.
I plan to post my own thoughts on this site, as well as some more materials I have found. I may also consider cross-posts as well where appropriate.
Berlin Travel Tips
I'll be in Berlin for a couple days soon and I'd like to see some DDR stuff while I'm there.
The DDR Museum looks interesting, even if it's just to look at the visual representations of everyday life while ignoring the lib remarks on Stasi oppression and whatnot.
Also happy DDR annexation celebration day. /s
Reading recommendations (not theory)
I've been back into reading fiction over the last three years or so after a long time away. It's been really nice to slow down and read a book for entertainment rather than always going for a series or movie (when I'm not reading theory of course). For somewhat nostalgic reasons I'm missing some easy reading spy thriller type novels. There's plenty loaded with CIA/MI6 propaganda but I've had a hard time finding anything with similar pacing from outside of the imperial core. Most of the "best translated / English Chinese authors to read" lists are chock full of liberal emigrants and the like, which isn't a perspective I'm terribly interested in while reading for fun. I also enjoy sci fi, but there it seems to be a bit easier to find non western authors.
Does anyone have anything to recommend? Unfortunately it's gotta be available in English or maybe German at the moment.
New global warming study just dropped
A preprinted study by James Hansen and collaborators suggests that we've all but locked in 2°C warming by 2050. They go on to calculate a likely equilibrium warming of 10°C considering current GHG levels and known feedback loops.
I know we need to take this as yet another call to action, but at the same time I think so many of us feel absolutely paralyzed by the enormity and incomprehensibility of the situation.
Spanish Sub’s New Problem
This is a bit dated by now, but the recent post about some failed US weapons systems reminded me about this absolute doozy of a Spanish submarine.
Years ago, the S-80 submarine suffered a major engineering setback: It was overweight and at risk of not being able to resurface after submerging. In the latest hitch, first reported on Wednesday by the newspaper El País, it can’t fit into the port of Cartagena at the military base in southeastern Spain where the submarine will be stationed.
The article wraps up with a lame attempt to normalize spending billions on military equipment.
Capitalist says what
If this isn't a dire indictment of the ability of the capitalist mode of production to solve pressing problems, I don't know what is.
Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief
In his annual shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way.
“We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”
Declarations of Independence
How should new countries be handled, where the people have clearly chosen that they would like to be their own sovereign nation, with all the rights and responsibilities that comes with?
Besides the people withing the territory agreeing that they're a new sovereign country and establishing the institutions thereof, what should the global community expect?
As things stand currently, it's simply up to the imperial core countries as to whether or not a territory is recognized as a country.
US Journalist Missing
Emmy-winning producer James Gordon Meek had his home raided by the FBI. His colleagues say they haven’t seen him since.
This story is incredibly strange and unnerving. How can a relatively well known and respected journalist simply disappear for six months before other journalists finally notice and start asking questions? Meek isn't even meaningfully anti-establishment although he's pissed off the military from time to time. It looks like he's pretty tight with the military and intelligence communities. It's clear to all of us that we cannot trust bourgeois media, but this is really something else, especially with new conspiracy theories of Chinese and Russian public figures disappearing being generated seemingly on a weekly basis yet nobody publicly stated that they noticed this guy's disappearance for six months.
Workers of the World, Unite!
In memory of the destroyed project of socialism in Germany, what better way to spend October 3rd (Germany's so-called German Reunification Day) than to discuss the successes, mistakes, and lessons of the DDR.
Putting such a positive light on this topic is still beyond taboo in mainstream circles, and anti-communist mythology runs deep in Germany even today. One way we can make revolutionary inroads in any capitalist nation is to educate the working people about the successes of their socialist peers and all the tried and tested ways we can work towards making life more meaningful for all of us.
AFC
Which one of you legends is responsible for this?
Maintaining Personal Relationships with non-Communists
I really stepped in it last night. My partner is livid with me for suggesting Stalin wasn't the evil dictator he's made out to be in the west. For a German who grew up with anti-communism and went to some very liberal universities for political science it was too much. They said something to the effect of "this feels exactly like if you said, oh Hitler wasn't that bad, he was actually a good guy." We're in the midst of planning our wedding and they were suddenly at the point of doubting that they know who I am and if this is a relationship they want to maintain.
We have a hard time discussing politics as it is. We are still not so great at interpreting the nuances of way each other speaks, and our background knowledge is very different. So we have to figure out what we do from here.
I can't come at this from the direction of "trying to convert them." They already think I have gone into a conspiracy theory ridden and propaganda laden hole, and believe me, I ask myself the same thing e