Quality journalism:

Yesterday, we reported on actors using Russian IP addresses to breach the National Labor Relations Board immediately after DOGE engineers obtained "God-tier" access. According to whistleblower Daniel Berulis the intruders used newly created DOGE credentials and techniques “consistent with sophisticated Russian intelligence operations.”

Shocking, if inexperienced, young idiots get to do whatever they want in critical systems, shits gonna hit the fan.

Any IT system DOGE touched should be considered compromised, not because of "sophisticated" state agents, but because you've had those idiots touching it.

Remember the first days of post-Musk twitter? Yeah, now imagine that with older, more brittle systems, way less experience in the staff, more AI slop, less time and way more god complex.

Also, still waiting for the day those "journalists" will learn that an IPs geolocation does not have to be the actual source...

Take the following with a grain of salt, it depends on your specific setup, environment and preference, but might help you:

Regarding system backups, and depending whether you need to run fedora, check out nixos, which takes a declarative file and builds your system based on that. Declarative immutable system, no moving parts, no breakage. If your system breaks, revert to a prior version and keep using what you've had before before retrying. Your backup is a git repo or whatever is keeping your handful of config files. Has been an absolute game changer for me, and the community and ecosystem around it is far beyond the point of quirky esoteric immutable distro.

VSCode has a powerful feature that I've yet to see in another editor/IDE - remote development, and it works really, really well. Spin up a VM however you like (I'd recommend checking out Vagrant), and depending on how much you need to do in windows either use the windows box as a remote run target (just running your built artifact in windows), or as a remote development box (running everything in windows and using your Linux VSCode as a "Frontend" for everything else happening in windows). Both methods can be made to work seamlessly in vsc.

Excel - again depending on your usage, you can try wine, you can use a VM, dual boot, M365 in browser, or a remote VM.

You probably just should let an AI generate that.

It's not about being dumb and expecting stuff for free but a general anger towards subscription based models. Fair models exist and are possible, but are a collateral of the general hate.

Then, free alternatives exist, and believe it or not, some people do not have a tiny monthly fee they could spare or do not want to pay for something that a free alternative exists.

Threema tried exactly that, and failed comically.

Just as AI will replace developers, and then we have Devin. Also don't forget the artists that will be replaced, that'll happen just when it learns that humans have 5 fingers per hand.

It's all marketing for AI, by the afaik currently biggest supplier of AI hardware.

The whole hype will implode when AI itself implodes, not as the AGI singularity, but when the resource costs spiral out of control, and its keeps getting its own generated glop spoonfed

I get both your and his point, I personally just disagree, because I do not think that closing your eyes and ignoring it prevents people from being "recruited".

In my opinion, this attempt and attitude has given the AfD in Germany (and probably several others) the space to grow, paired with a black and white mentality: the general attitude is mostly - either you vote left, or you're a nazi, end of discussion. There is no longer a political spectrum in discussions, it's us or them, left or right, normal or nazi, and I think that this is very, very bad. I think that a democracy should represent everyone, since what makes us a free and democratic state is that everyone is part of it, is represented, and has his freedom of thought, speech and beliefs. Making "having thoughts aligning with the right" a taboo only makes it more interesting, especially for younger people, and given that pretty much every Internet community also generates echo chambers (one or many), it makes it more attractive to potentially end up in one, where those people will realize that they can talk openly here, which makes them more susceptible to further radicalization. And to make it clear - violence of any kind is not included in the freedom, neither by the right, nor by the left.

Instead of focusing on how to prevent people from shifting right, which you simply can't, I think we should focus on how we can prevent some people from shifting right, and some people from shifting further right, which is perfectly achievable by proper education, applying a spectrum of views and leaving space where more people do not feel left out.

Part of a left and democratic mindset is that all people are made and worth equal, tolerance, and an open mind. In the left versus right discussion there are more than just leftists, nazis, and nazi sympathizers. There are people who may be just not smart enough to figure out that they are just caught by polemic, populism and propaganda, or maybe who don't even know what they are getting into. There are people who are just protest voting. Hell, even the deepest far-right nazi hellhole has or had people who are trying to leave it.

Sure, the actual nazis and hardliners will applaud that Musk picture and see and use it as confirmation and propaganda, and you won't be able to influence them otherwise with that. All other groups in between can be influenced though, even though in both directions.

Specifically for Musk - his general public image has shifted very much from a technological and financial genius to a narcissist right hardliner multimillionaire, because of his actions and people publicly exposing and talking about them, and still he has a big cult of supporters who'll be on his side till the end. And honestly? That's fine, but I personally am very happy to see the general shift.

Don't you see AfD on the rise there? The AfD is not only rising because of Nazi sympathy, but also because of protest voters, a literal fuckton of drama around pretty much every other significant party, too many deaths being instrumentalized, and a disfunctional current government. Latest opinion poll: https://dawum.de/Bundestag/ - so "only" 20% support them.

Most of the people seeing this isn't going to know the context (i.e. this is a protest). If you strip away the context, this is just a blatant public display of the fascist salute, which many there have wanted to do for so long but couldn't because they feared the consequences. This could very well embolden them.

Even german news are full of the orange idiot and his millionaire friends doing their escapades, and you seem to imagine most of the german population sitting there applauding him? "Blatant displays of the fascist salute" are NOT what many here want to do, but what most would like to do without consequences is punching a Nazi straight to their face.

If you haven't realized, many european governments shifted right because the populism of those parties exploited and used the political tensions and the accumulated anger for the past failures of many left and green hardliners very well.

Germans are not more right or have more Nazis than many other European states, and given the hereditary guilt, less than many.

No, but the more people block them, the less up votes and visibility they will receive for their posts.

Why are we giving this person their stage again? How probable is it that the instance admins of the like 15 instances they have accounts on will all collectively ban him? It's just your average nazi spammer on the internet. You've read that "bio" this person has. Even if they get banned, they'll come back just on principle. Just block him like any sane person would do, leave him shadow banned like that with his nazi friends, and call it a day.

So, you mean using a proprietary vendor to operate something binds you to that vendor? Congratulations, you've just discovered vendor lock-in.

"Obfuscating the environment" is also an absolutely unhinged claim, what even is that supposed to mean?

And again, Automattic is NOT in the right. What Automattic did was break license terms, attempt to extort, steal code, and light their whole brand, company, ecosystem and community on fire. Matt spit in the faces of his open source community (and open source in general), and every single person dependent on WordPress losing their job because of the shift he's causing will be blood on his hands personally. Even if WP Engine was questionably morally or ethically, they did play by the laws and the license terms. Matt went on a mental breakdown and additionally to his unethical behavior broke several laws on that journey, which is exactly why he is losing the lawsuit. Matt and Automattic are NOT in the right.

To be fair, Matt is providing meltdowns regularly and totally free of charge. 😂

I'd laugh my ass off if WP Engine would lead a hard fork called WP Core. If any WP Engine folks read this, feel free to use the name, I won't sue, I promise.

It really depends what you're doing. If it's really "only" blogging I've seen a lot of blogs using Ghost. Hugo is more of a "simpler" static site generator.

That whole blog post is so full of salt, that it really hurts to read.

Still going on about the "imbalance of the contributions", well that's open source for you - you don't get to control who contributes how much, all you can do is ask nicely, and provide a good experience for contributors. Acting like a lunatic does not do that.

legal attacks started by WP Engine

Of course they did after the witch-hunt and the absolutely illegal, unethical and plain ridiculous behavior of Automattic. The counter they did, the whole ACF takeover and the slandering are a lawsuit handed on a plate.

The way "community" is quoted in that article for those who dared to disagree.

This legal action diverts significant time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting WordPress’s growth and health.

Yeah, as a developer I also hate when lawsuits are stopping me from working. He had no problem letting go of nearly 10% of his staff with their "alignment offer" to get rid of people who again dared to disagree, but the legal action is diverting resources now.

But the whole "Focused on the Future" paragraph is going full mask off:

Before, they said that resources will be reallocated to "for-profit projects within Automattic", and

We will redirect our energy toward projects that can fortify WordPress for the long term

It's only a matter of time another hostile takeover will take place, and Matt will attempt to go full for-profit on WordPress itself.

We’re excited to return to active contributions to WordPress core, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse, and WordPress.org when the legal attacks have stopped.

Full on extortion. Stop the lawsuit or we won't contribute.

Honestly, if I'd be dependent on WordPress for my work, I'd not sleep well and start going into something else right fucking now. How are people that stupid, childish and entitled getting into such positions.

Matt never ceases to amaze with his smoothbrain decisions.

The amount of effort this moron puts into his weird personal vendetta against WP engine, even after the court told him that he has nothing, which was actually his last chance to end this kinda gracefully, could've been used for so much better things.

And he's not only successfully kicking himself in the balls, he's willing to throw so many years of community and project time and effort under the bus for it.

Go on Matt, keep telling how much you're only doing this for WordPress.

And where did I say that no one should pay for youtube premium? Where did I say that everything should be 100% free?

If YouTube premium is worth it for you, go for it. In my opinion YouTube is getting worse by the day, and it's monopoly due to its reach and resources suppresses any competition, unfortunately. Even if YouTube Premium would cost 10 cents I won't pay it, because I simply think that YouTube has severely gone wrong. Vote with your wallet.

And before other connoisseurs of boot material chime in - I'm paying for Google one. I'm using drive and mail daily. I bought the new pixel, watch and buds day one, and all of those are amazing Google products I'm very happy to pay for, just as I do for Spotify, HP, Netflix, IntelliJ and any other product that brings me value.

Pay for what you want, and let me do the same.

YouTube is the biggest platform, and the one with the most resources. Whether it's the best one is on another page.

And again, keep bootlicking. Chrome fanboy, goated YouTube, and even MSP, talking about copium. Your poor fucking customers and people working under you.

Yes, the problem are definitely the few percent of people using ad blockers, but absolutely not the corpos spewing out a few cents while watching creators fight against each other and the algorithm ™️ from their second yacht they bought this week.

Keep bootlicking, fool.

No one tops ada in this regard. They alone are my reason for dodging all and any funny shark communities.

This has nothing to do with licensing. [...] If you're going to run a business that depends on open-source software, there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.

Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. It's absolutely and only a licensing issue, and as a user of open source software you are obligated to do what the license states. WordPress is licensed under GPL, which explicitly allows software being run for any purposes, explicitly including commercial purposes. The giving back part would come into play if WPE would use WordPress as part of their own software - which they don't.

WPE did what the license, and therefore Matt and Automattic allowed them to. Matt decided to try and literally extort money from them, before going on his fully fledged meltdown.

Whether WPEs business model is morally questionable is irrelevant. They did play by the rules. Matt did not.

And the situation is not new, as far as I remember redis was the last big player in that situation. But they also did play by the rules, they changed their license starting from a given version, made big hosters that made money by redis-as-a-service pay for using redis, and took the L like grown ups by losing their FOSS community and having valkey as a hard fork and direct competitor now. No drama, no meltdowns, no shit storms and no lawyers involved.