A call for help from @[email protected], who among other things is associated with F-droid:

An open call to #Android #developers! The #EuropeanCommission needs help evaluating #GooglePlay's #security claims. I'm going to do what I can. Anyone with knowledge of how app installation, uninstallation, sandboxing, signing, etc. could really help here. If you want to contribute, please reach out!

I figured maybe someone around here could be capable of helping out. Note that his Mastodon instance, librem.one, does not support private messages.

Friday July 4 2:00 pm Logan Circle

This July 4th cannot be a celebration of Trump’s Fascist America. It must be a day to join our voices to demand TRUMP MUST GO NOW, in front of the White House and throughout the streets of this country – in a collective shout heard around the world.

We stand on a precipice – the Trump fascist regime has rejected the rule of law and deployed the US military and massive Gestapo-like force against the people. And in bombing Iran, in violation of US and international law, Trump has begun a war that threatens the future. We either build serious mass nonviolent struggle now or face being set back.

We pledge that we will build on the strength of millions who took to the streets on June 14 against Trump’s military parade, and advance toward a day of “Making Good Trouble” on July 17 – and beyond that to forge a fierce, unrelenting, nonviolent struggle that makes it impossible for Trump to govern the country, impose his fascist program, or hold onto power.

This is how hated tyrants have been driven out all over the world and it is what we must do here – not allowing our power to be diverted into elections in 2026 or 2028 that will be too late to stop the consolidation of fascist rule. Trump has shown, with threats and action, that he will not accept any restraints on his power to lock in a terrible future – with the largest military and nuclear arsenal at his fingertips.

No! The time to act is now. Now is the time for Trump to go.

This July 4, in D.C. and everywhere, in the name of humanity:
We Declare Our Independence from Trump’s Fascist America!
The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now!

– RefuseFascism.org, @[email protected]

Via @[email protected] on Bluesky

John Hoiland is an ageing farmer in Montana, still running his farm the old fashioned way after the age of 90. The documentary John: The Last Norwegian Cowboy follows him for a few months, documenting his musical contributions, how he keeps his farm machinery running, how his mother taught him to make lefse, and how he once starred in a chevy commercial.

It's a really nice watch.

Lyrics in English:

It’s hard to be a real human being
Truly difficult, my dear Yosl Ber
It’s hard to be a real human being
Truly difficult, my dear Yosl Ber

You’re supposed to give grandmothers respect
Rather than throw them out of their homes
You’re not supposed to murder any children
You can’t even blind them

You can’t make and spread
Plague, and the chains of hunger
You’re not allowed to destroy a hospital
Not even just one!

Sometimes it’s hard to remain (behave like) humans
Especially when we are miserable and suffering
But there’s only one choice, my dear boy
If you don’t wish to be a swine

Yosl Ber
Serves in the military
Yosl, Yosl, Yosl Ber
Serves in the military

Words by @[email protected] with Annie Cohen, music by Geoff Berner. Berner is a Jewish Canadian protest singer who places himself somewhere between folk, punk, and klezmer.

Yosl Ber is a man serving in the military in an old Yiddish song (cover version here) by Itzik Manger. Lyrics with translation are available here. In the current context, it's hard not to think of Yosl Ber as a person recruited to the IDF as part of Israel's mandatory military service.

As deportations continue, this is a question of some relevance to the Americans out there. Music by @[email protected].

I've had this plant for a while in other countries, and it was always very easy going. But after the last time I moved the sapling I took with me has started struggling.

The picture is not a perfect illustration, but you can see new leaves coming out turning black in the ends, and eventually drying out and dying. This already happened with a lot of leaves that I cut off, but now it's repeating itself with the new ones.

The plant has been in a relatively bright spot and I think it has received enough water that it shouldn't be the problem. The black parts are completely dead. Does anyone have any idea what can be done? :)

I'm sorry the picture is not more illustrative.

I recently cancelled my Dropbox subscription, and will now be running local backups instead. For that purpose I need an external hard drive.

It seems most companies (Western Digital, Kingston, Seagate) are American, with Japanese Toshiba occasionally showing up in my search results.

Does anyone know of/have any experience with European storage manufacturers? If not I guess Toshiba will have to do. :)

Nawrocki, aka the "nationalist" candidate, just won the election in Poland with a very narrow margin.

Nawrocki is formally independent, but is aligned with the PiS party of current president Duda, who were responsible for undermining Polish democracy by among other things stacking the courts with illegitimate judges. As the president has the power to block all judidcal appointments, it does not look like Poland will have their democracy back for the next five years: Duda has simply blocked all judicial appointments rendering the Polish state a lame duck, and in all likelihood Nawrocki will keep up the same obstructionist strategy.

Then again, that's what they voted for.

The thing I hate the most about AI and it's ease of access; the slow, painful death of the hacker soul—brought not by war or scarcity, but by convenience. By buttons. By bots. [...]

There was once magic here. There was once madness.

Kids would stay up all night on IRC with bloodshot eyes, trying to render a cube in OpenGL without segfaulting their future. They cared. They would install Gentoo on a toaster just to see if it’d boot. They knew the smell of burnt voltage regulators and the exact line of assembly where Doom hit 10 FPS on their calculator. These were artists. They wrote code like jazz musicians—full of rage, precision, and divine chaos.

Now? We’re building a world where that curiosity gets lobotomized at the door. Some poor bastard—born to be great—is going to get told to "review this AI-generated patchset" for eight hours a day, until all that wonder calcifies into apathy. The terminal will become a spreadsheet. The debugger a coffin.

Unusually well-written piece on the threat AI poses to programming as an art form.

A Cypriot cargo ship ran ashore immediately next to a Norwegian household today, and they are currently doing their best to get the ship unstuck. It's a surprisingly soothening live stream.

Via @[email protected] on Mastodon.

A Cypriot cargo ship ran ashore immediately next to a Norwegian household today, and they are currently doing there best to get the ship unstuck. It's a surprisingly sootehning live stream.

Via @[email protected] on Mastodon.

Posted to Facebook yesterday, but I only saw it now. Seems to be worth sharing, as the Senator also requested.

Last night in the Senate, something really important happened. Republicans forced us to debate their billionaire bailout budget framework. We started voting at 6 PM because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.

So I want to explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. The apex of Republicans’ plan to turn over our government to their wealthy cronies is a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And they plan to pay for it with cuts to programs that working people rely on. Popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, are all being targeted. In order to pass the tax cut, Republicans have to go through a series of procedural steps. Last night, they took the first step which requires them to pass an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as we want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that.

Now, we knew that Republicans would largely unanimously oppose them, but we had two objectives here. One, Republicans were forced to put their opinion on record — many for the first time — on the most corrupt parts of Trump and Musk’s agenda. Two, as I’ve been saying, I am going to make every process and procedure as slow and painful as possible for as long as my colleagues choose to ignore the constitutional crisis happening before our eyes.

So what did we propose? We proposed no tax cuts for anyone who makes a billion dollars a year. We made them vote on whether or not Elon Musk and DOGE should have limitless access to Americans’ personal data. We made them vote on whether to protect IVF and require insurers to cover it. Every single amendment Democrats proposed was shot down. On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. Every Republican voted against our proposal to prevent more tax cuts for billionaires. The corruption and theft is happening in the open here.

The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the most wealthy that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people. Oh and by the way, any tax cuts for working people are going to be washed out by higher costs for basic necessities, like health care and food. It’s a fundamental injustice.

Thanks to your pressure and support, many of my Democratic colleagues have joined my effort to do everything we can to make sure they cannot destroy democracy and steal your money in the dark of the night. We are being loud about what is happening. I’m going to continue to grind the gears of Congress down as much as possible to make it that much harder and slower to get away with this corruption. That’s why the votes lasted until nearly 5 AM.

This is a five-alarm fire. I don’t think we have two years to plan and fight back. I think we have months. It’s still in our power to stop the destruction of our democracy with mass mobilization and effective opposition from elected officials. So we can’t miss any opportunity to take advantage of opportunities to put Republicans on the record and shine a light on what is happening.

And you have a role to play in this as well. I need you to amplify what’s happening, support the leaders who are fighting for you to make sure they can continue speaking truth to power against Musk and Trump’s billionaire cronies, and show up at rallies and town halls. Use every tool at your disposal to send a message loud and clear about how you expect my colleagues to lead and fight in this moment.

Every best wish,

US Senator Chris Murphy