Today is the 8th anniversary of @Liberapay's launch. Coincidentally, I have an announcement to make.
I'm looking for someone to open a new chapter in the project's history by becoming its second maintainer. That doesn't mean it's a programming job, although help in that area is always welcome. You can find a bit more information in https://github.com/liberapay/salon/issues/661 and ask any questions you have there or in private.
Please boost 🙂
Added a new RSS feed you can use to grab our news.
The newest is just for the hottest articles over 30 days if the other feeds are too much for you.
All the feeds are here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/rss/
Dear People attending #FOSDEM
The maintainer of #XZ is still in need of true support after they were abused by someone who tried to viciously introduce a backdoor to potentially millions of servers and computers.
They opened a Liberapay account here: https://liberapay.com/Larhzu.
They only receive 5€ a week for now…
You know XZ is crucial for lots of critical systems. Please tip them generously.and boost this message!
(Discovery borrowed from @Sylvhem)
Lydia Pintscher, Vice President of KDE e.V., receives the European Open Source Award for Advocacy and Awareness 🏆!
Congrats @nightrose !
Bookshop, the anti-amazon that gives $$ to local bookstores with every sale, now has ebooks. That’s a big deal: https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
The operational costs for:
https://pixelfed.social
https://pixelfed.art
https://pixelfed.org
https://fediverse.info
https://fedidb.org
https://loops.video
https://push.pixelfed.net
https://pubkit.net
Now exceed $4,000 USD per month, we currently get $1,465 from Patreon.
We could use your financial support more than ever while I build a foundation for long term financial support (think official hosting).
Please boost 🙏
*KICKS DOOR DOWN*
Hey everyone! Hate AI web crawlers? Have some spare CPU cycles you want to use to punish them?
Meet Nepenthes!
https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes
This little guy runs nicely on low power hardware, and generates an infinite maze of what appear to be static files with no exit links. Web crawlers will merrily hop right in and just .... get stuck in there! Optional randomized delay to waste their time and conserve your CPU, optional markovbabble to poison large language models.
The Stop Killing Games petition is back in the UK to sign https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/01/the-stop-killing-games-petition-is-back-in-the-uk-to-sign/
Folks Pixelfed is getting slammed.
Since Meta started blocking links to Pixelfed it seems the world has discovered this wonderful public Instagram alternative picture sharing social media application (see Striesand effect).
But things that are public, rely on us to fund them. @dansup does not have a bunch of VC billionaires writing big checks for more server capacity.
If you can spare a few dollars to support public social media, right now is the time to do so!
The government apparently sees the British Library as a source of leasable data. It's a copyright deposit library. If this means wholesale redefining books, art, movies etc as 'data' handed to techbros, the creative industries and all of us working in them are screwed.
If you have not yet responded to this consultation, you have until 25th February. It's long and in many cases unclear but you can answer n/a to complex, obscure questions. Make your voice heard.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/copyright-and-artificial-intelligence
“Resist Hopelessness”
I thought I’d given up on “hope.” The concept made less sense and felt less applicable to this period in human history, now so wholly structured by christofascism.
It hit me last winter that “nihilism” now descriptively captured what had become my abandonment of hope in these (end?) times, even if prescriptively, I still held tight to the sense of prefiguration and thus promise that anarchism embodies.
My “anarchism of despair” was, and is, generative, even if filled with growing pains. After all, our strategies, tactics, and tools—our very forms of resistance and forms of freedom—must shift if we want to “fight fascism” versus battling a neoliberal era that’s now bygone. States, capital, and cops seem way ahead of us anarchists in understanding the need for this dynamism. (Another reason I lost hope: we’re now on the defensive under fascism, fighting for survival, versus the hopeful “another world is possible” offensive of vibrant, thriving anarchistic experiments.)
But this past week, two people reminded me that I still do, in fact, have hope—just a different version, more suited to these dire, bleak days. I have hope on the microlevel, as opposed to the jubilant sense of macrolevel hope of the recent past.
“Other social relations are possible” isn’t as catchy a slogan, nor is the shorthand “collective care.” Yet that’s the more humble microlevel hope I realize I still cling fast to—the kind that doesn’t simply mouth “we take care of each other” but instead shows up and just does it. Like after a hurricane in North Carolina, or during fires in Los Angeles, genocide in Gaza, and COVID around the globe, or when one trans kid feels alone.
So the anonymous person who made the sticker seen here (spotted in PGH) reminded me that we have to resist—as ongoing act of antifascist bravery—letting this social order kill off hope among us.
And a second person, who DM’d me a heartfelt apology for making fun of me years ago after a talk I did that asserted hope—when they dissed the notion then—reminded me that we can transform and mend. As they shared, they’re now able to “find hope.” And with their caring DM, they gifted hope back to me.
Reminder if you’re unaware: most US travelers to the UK (including for flight connections) will need an “electronic travel authorization” starting January 8th, or you may be denied boarding for your flight or turned away at immigration.
It costs GBP 10 (about 13 bucks) and is valid for two years. The easiest way to apply is with the “UK ETA” iPhone or Android app, which scans your passport and face and takes your photo and money. Approval can take 3 days, but mine took less than 2 minutes.
For the 4th year in a row, my all-sky camera has been taking an image of the sky above the Netherlands every 15 seconds. Combining these images reveal the length of the night changing throughout the year, the passage of clouds and the motion of the Moon and the Sun through the sky. #astrophotography
My mom, who is in her 70s, and not particularly tech savvy, just explained that she hates Google now, because the first results are always AI, which just pulls from other sources and is usually inaccurate.
So let’s stop assuming that non-techies, older people, and mothers and grandmothers are too naive to see through the hype. Mostly it’s the tech bros and finance douches who are too stupid to actually understand what they’re boosting.
| UK | NHS | Trans pol |
Abigail Thorn, creator of the "I emailed the NHS 133 times" video a while ago, received a response to make content with 101's and this is the explanation shy she's not doing it. Long read but does cover some things that might be of community interest
Donor appreciation post: Thank you for all your generosity 💖!
We are close to reaching our first fundraiser stretch goal...
https://kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2024/
... And we want to thank everybody who made this possible. You have guaranteed KDE's survival for yet another year.
We are at 95% of our first stretch goal!
With less than €3,000 to go, our fundraiser is about to cross the €50,000 mark, and we will be entering the final stretch of our campaign.
Will your donation push us over the line?
weirdo free/libre open source software person, member of the KDE community since forever, who loves squeaky, slinky and fuzzy things - they/them