Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

I own a Framework 13 (i7-1260p) laptop which on rare occasions suffered from agonizing slowness. This was usually fixed by a reboot so I always thought it was some quirk with Linux.

However, it was not.

A few weeks ago I while I was playing Factorio, the performance suddenly dropped from one moment to the other. A reboot did not help.

Question:

On an x86 (or x86_64) system where the Linux kernel already was working, has the Linux kernel ever required end-users apply a BIOS or UEFI update for it to continue working with newer releases?

I'm looking for precedent, or lack of precedent I suppose.

While we'll celebrate Indigenous Feast Day it's also The National Day of Mourning on Thursday.

Educate yourselves. Educate your children. Educate your family.

You have a lot to be thankful for but it comes at our expense.

https://www.truthsgiving.org/

On it 😌

"Where can I shove a blockchain in?"

Please don't.

Blockchains are about establishing consensus in a world where you can't trust anyone. They're a libertarian macho bullshit fantasy that also boils the oceans.

If you can't imagine a way to build consensus with your community without relying on a technology that is actively harmful to the future, then you lack imagination and creativity.

One of my low-key convictions is that for all the fanciness of the modern web we've still never really achieved the potential of hypertext

Infection controls, like pasteurization, masks, hand washing, clean water, refrigeration and food safety, and vaccines are both required for civilization and proven science. If you disagree, you are promoting bad public health policies and likely racism. So please unfollow.

Trying to figure out a 3D-printable design to store printed photos in one of my Euroboxes. This should work, but heck is OpenSCAD slow when rendering all 1656 photos that it can store, in hindsight I wouldn't have added them 🙈

"be gay do crime" aber auf deutsch? das geht so:


Sehr geehrte Lesenden,

unter Bezugnahme auf die fortschreitende gesellschaftliche Differenzierung und in Übereinstimmung mit der Zielsetzung, die strukturelle Integration pluralistischer Lebensentwürfe zu fördern, möchten wir Ihnen im Rahmen dieses Schreibens eine fundierte Grundlage zur intellektuellen Auseinandersetzung und potenziellen praktischen Anwendung subversiv-symbolischer Handlungsstrategien nahelegen.

Es erscheint aus verwaltungsrechtlicher sowie sozialphilosophischer Perspektive angezeigt, eine kritische Reflexion bestehender hegemonialer Diskurse und normativer Ordnungen zu befördern. Diese sollen im Lichte einer theoretisch fundierten und performativ-symbolischen Praxis hinterfragt werden, die auf die Dekonstruktion sozio-struktureller Asymmetrien sowie die Sichtbarmachung institutionalisierter Diskriminierungsmechanismen abzielt. Hierbei könnte eine bewusste Abweichung von traditionellen Konventionen als konzeptionelle Grundlage dienen, um transformative Impulse innerhalb des gesellschaftlichen Diskurses zu initiieren.

Eine solche Methodik umfasst die deliberative Wahl einer von den gängigen normativen Erwartungshaltungen abweichenden Identitätsgestaltung. Dabei ist ausdrücklich die Möglichkeit der Implementierung symbolisch widerständischer Verhaltensweisen in Betracht zu ziehen, die in einem diskursiven Sinne eine Rekontextualisierung von Machtstrukturen und sozialen Hierarchien ermöglichen könnten. Es sei dabei hervorgehoben, dass die juristische Bewertung derartiger Handlungen im Rahmen eines analytischen Ansatzes sekundär zu betrachten ist, sofern deren primäres Ziel die kritische Hinterfragung und Reform gesellschaftlicher Ordnungsprinzipien darstellt.

Die vorliegende Empfehlung richtet sich insbesondere an jene Akteur*innen, die sich durch einen hohen Grad an Engagement für soziale Gerechtigkeit, Diversität und integrative Werte auszeichnen. Ziel ist die Etablierung eines paradigmatischen Dialogs, welcher die Transformation bestehender gesellschaftlicher Machtstrukturen begünstigt und den Weg für eine nachhaltige, pluralistische Gesellschaft ebnet.

Sollten Sie Interesse an einer weiterführenden Beratung, an spezifischen Leitfäden zur konzeptionellen Ausarbeitung nonkonformistischer Strategien oder an der Teilnahme an einschlägigen Fachseminaren zu den Themen Identitätsdiversifizierung, strukturelle Normenkritik und subversive Praxisformen haben, steht Ihnen unser Referat für weiterführende Anfragen zur Verfügung.

Mit verbindlichsten Grüßen und den besten Wünschen für Ihr Engagement zur kritischen Weiterentwicklung gesellschaftlicher Strukturen,

Ember
Hauptreferent*in für Normendekonstruktion und Antikonformismus
Ministerium für Gesellschaftliche Kohärenz, Hegemonialkritik und Antikonformistisches Handeln

RE: https://catcatnya.com/users/cache/statuses/113554716370750422

And, to be clear, everything I describe above would have to be done with the full consent of (at least the network administrators of a given network if not actually) the end user.

You, or someone who administers your machine, would need to trust the certificate authority. You, or someone who administers your networks, would need to select and use these altDNS servers.

You would need to choose to use a browser that supported the services we designed.

I'm not talking about a vector for attack, but rather one for liberation.

Early DNS operated by a bunch of folks literally passing around copies of their host files. Modern DNS has replaced that with a for profit system backed by an allegedly non-profit organization.

The DNS servers that your network uses are probably respecting ICANN, and probably have consensus with most of the rest of the DNS servers in the world, but they don't have to. I could set up a DNS server right now, and you could point your router at it and I could make my own TLDs and also redirect every query issued to google.com to somewhere else and there's nothing anyone could do to stop me (well, sort of, see next toot.)

There are standards bodies writing regulations and handing out domain names, and what have you, but those things only work because we allow them to.

Web standards work because everyone agrees that they'll use a web browser that implements them.

Remember browser prefixes in CSS? For a while, every web browser was scrambling to implement new features that other browsers didn't support and that hadn't been standardized yet, but people used them anyway (I did, certainly) and eventually those things were made in to standards.

We can use browsers that only implement a subset (or that actually implement a superset) of those standards. We can write web pages in such a way that we empower people to skip Google and Mozilla's browser duopoly.

It is within our ability to implement web services that do everything most people want out of the web and a web browser that can access all of those services, without needing anyone's blessing.

(And, a few years ago here on the fediverse, some punks did it! Project Gemini is still out there, still being used, still very cool. It is not what I would have built in the same space, and I bounce off of it when I try to use it seriously, but there are many things about it that I like a great deal.)

Tories decided to make school hostile to trans kids by refusing to allow them to use nicknames without parental permission and outing them to their parents, etc.

But then the election happened and the policy was never really clarified.

So bigots feel empowered and staff allies have no idea what support they're allowed to provide. I asked a researcher who specialises in education and trans kids what the current "best practice" is under the current regime and she's asking around. There is a total lack of clarity.

And this is just textbook fascism. People working in schools are ready to obey the rules, so they "obey in advance". They don't know what they should obey, so the error on the side of caution - of failing to protect children.

I do understand that it's scary and there are all kind of vague threats to future livelihood and freedom for allies. Nobody wants to be a martyr and being *the* court challenge is very stressful.

But it's worth recalling that **nobody** was every prosecuted for Section 28.

Protecting the dignity of vulnerable students is right and Labour's major concern is being embarrassed, so if we're clear that it will very much be embarrassing for them to push back, they won't. Be the ally that kids need.

#trans #ukpol #ally #education #section28

I am once again thinking about helping to (loosely) organize some kind of online alternative to FOSDEM for those in FOSS who aren't comfortable attending a super-spreader event in the peak of Europe's flu season.

#fluConf2025

EDIT: there is now a blog post about it 👇

https://cryptography.dog/blog/flu-conf-2025/

I've published a blog post about the idea:

https://cryptography.dog/blog/flu-conf-2025/

Coining a new term (maybe?) for software development tools that make it so easy to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot that you have to consciously put in effort to avoid doing so:

"feet-seeking missile"

you're welcome

@silberfuchs

Something that I think was not clear to me and maybe to many more people at the beginning: We all have an idea to not say anything incriminating during an interrogation, but cops will be fishing for *any* information at *all* times, and they will use sketchy emotional strategies to catch you off guard or provoke a reaction. A formal interrogation in a room is 1% of it.

**Edit**: Details about laws in these examples are specific to Germany, but the general idea and cop behaviour apply universally.

"Good cop" in my experience looks less like the nice detective from the cop show, and more like a non-cop-looking woman in cleaning lady clothes coming to you at the corridor and asking if you would like a cup of coffee. If you accept the next question will be "are you doing OK?" or "are you being mistreated? would you like to file a complaint? I can ask for a female officer if you prefer." This is a trick. Your emotions are high, you'll be thirstier for support and a bit of fucking humanity than you can imagine right now, and they'll deliberately exploit that to get you to slip more info, about yourself and others.

So your answer to "would you like a cup of coffee" is silence. If you're pressured to say something that's not silence, you say "no comment". "Is this your first time here?" No comment. "If you don't follow the proper procedure we'll have to hold you for longer" no comment. "You know, I don't really want to do this, actually I'm really proud that young people like you are taking a stand, this is just my job, can we just get this done so you can leave earlier?" No. Comment.

"Bad cop" in my experience looks less like the tough guy Dick Tracy slamming on the table, and more like snarky xenophobic or transphobic remarks, or punching protesters under the banner where the cameras can't record it, more to rub on your face that they can do what they want than to hurt, angling for a reaction; or flashing a heil hitler from the van when they pass antifas. If a cop shows my gender marker to others and make mocking comments and I say "that's transphobia and it's illegal", I fall into the trap. This will start a conversation and in the conversation they'll have all sorts of *other* tricks to enrage and scare and provoke you to talk. Complaints are to be filed with a cool head and through your lawyer.

They get you angry enough to return an abusive insult with "fuck you, you bigot"? Congrats, you just did a crime. Furthermore, anger leads to mistakes. At one protest, a cop doing a torture hold on my hand while dragging me around whispered on my ear like, "had enough? I can do much more". The beard of this creep rubbing on my ear while he got off on hurting girls got me so pissed, so eager to be a hero of the resistance, to defy them even harder and prove that pain won't break me, that I refused to show my ID when requested later. Had he not said the thing, I would have been clear-thinking enough to remember that refusing to show the ID, in my particular situation, would just give them a pretext to fingerprint me anyway while increasing my punishment.

Cop walking with you on the corridor: "We know you broke the Starbucks window at the protest, we have you on camera." You, indignantly: "That's preposterous, I was at the other side of the march, I have witnesses!" Now you just helped the cops figure out that one of the other 3 comrades they detained is the culprit, and in addition they get some fresh new witnesses to do their manipulations on.

A trick I heard of: Cop: "We have a complaint that you have been photographing those right-wing protesters, that's illegal." (It's not actually illegal to take photos here, only to publish them; it's also not illegal to photograph cops doing abuse; but they often will tell you it is.) "You must delete the photos from your gallery immediately." (This is not a thing they can demand, but they will anyway.) You, indignantly: "I have no photos of them, look!" Cop will swiftly grab your unlocked cellphone from your hand and take his time scrolling through all folders. Cops are not instant street prosecutors and can't accuse you of things. If an angry cop shouts and accuses you of a crime, you don't prove that you're innocent, you say nothing. "No comment". Criminal lawyers are trained to deal with this type of trick; leave your defense to them.

Want to file a complaint about this type of illegal yet omnipresent cop behaviour? Good luck proving it, it's your word against theirs and who do you think the judges will side with, antifa radicals or cops?

Mikola Dziadok from Belarus recounts that a favourite of cops who catch anarchists, in the post-Soviet world, is to do 4chan-ass political debate, like "you claim to be anarchist but you do judo, that's hierarchical!" Or for good cop, "in my heart I think anarchism makes sense, can you recommend me something to read?" (Your book recommendation is "no comment".)

Queer Hacker Community question: I know a few folk who experience and exist with plural identity, but in many regions they're a minority within a minority.

At least one such person is looking to relocate to Minneapolis and is hoping to connect with community there. Anyone want to raise a flag? I offered to post here (and I also did over on Bluesky) since my reach is broader than theirs, and they'll monitor the replies. 🤝

(Also, please forgive if your experience and understanding of plurality falls outside what you'd label as queer. I'm less familiar with this territory but I recognize that some folk feel comfortable with that categorization while others may not be.)

German is a dialect of Belgian