A daily reminder of why I keep repeating that #Israel is run by a #Nazist government.
It needs to be liberated by Netanyahu and its Nazi Jews as badly as Gaza needs to be liberated by Hamas.
A big change for #Platypush - and more are on their way before the next (very big) release.
The #YouTube integration has been completely rewritten to remove all the references to the YouTube API. I've tried my best to play fair, but the YouTube API has seen way too many breaking changes recently, as a result of Google's strategy against scrapers and 3rd-party clients. I just can't keep maintaining an integration with an API provided by a company with such a hostile stance against developers. I want to spend my time making new things work, not fixing stuff purposefully broken by someone else. Even just searching for videos now requires a registered and approved Google project, and the user to be logged in: this isn't exactly the kind of stuff that is easy for anybody to set up and run.
Also, scraping results from the Web interface is no longer possible unless the user has JS enabled - which means no more easy beautifulsoup scripts, one has to summon Selenium and its whole frontend suite to scrape stuff.
From now on, the YouTube integration will use #Piped as a backend instead. A simple public API, subscription to search results and feeds through simple RSS syndacation, and no more headaches with an enshittified tech-hostile giant. This is what the developer experience with YouTube used to be until a few years ago, and what it should have remained.
https://git.platypush.tech/platypush/platypush/commit/2b12984c81e83d54d1135300b0dc5031615fe6a3
A lucid historical analysis of how #Israel ended up being the #Nazist State it is today, and how each of its acts, from Rabin's murder in 1995 that first put Netanyahu in power up to today's war, has been an additional step towards that Palestinian annihilation that the hardcore Jewish fascist minority has dreamed for a long time.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-final-solution-for-the-palestinians
nostr:npub105ve72qqmjxz08skum2lkds9qkj67689djwwr2a0qkrxts3hqydqm9hk8p nostr:npub1ffeh63h9kke3sjcn3f7kuzh80xdtmey52axtpjjjdfd4cwhum4tq682lmq Dror Eydar holds no office since 2022, and his entire political career was a 3-year assignment as Ambassador to Italy. Suggesting he’s communicating the goals of the Israeli government is a stretch to fit a narrative.
I’m no fan, but Netanyahu held a press conference yesterday where he was very clear about Israel’s goals of the war: Return the hostages and eliminate Hamas.
nostr:npub1tj8q5m28jhnf6xucd9up274p3rmdzg3cm0cp9c6fa8f0s57d95qshjwalv nostr:npub1ffeh63h9kke3sjcn3f7kuzh80xdtmey52axtpjjjdfd4cwhum4tq682lmq I simply can't trust Netanyahu. While his official position is to eliminate Hamas and liberate the hostages, I simply can't trust someone who has openly promised to do anything in his power to delay the implementation of the Oslo accords - and has managed to do so for two decades so far.
And he's in a coalition with Shas (Ovadia Yosef repeatedly cursed the Palestinians and call for the wrath of god against them), Tkuma (which opposes any territorial concessions to the Palestinians), and Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose has made it a political mission to harass anybody who isn't Jew - from provoking Muslims praying in mosques, to defending spitting at Christians as an "ancient Jewish tradition".
I mean, I don't have to see a Roman salute to recognize a fascist. I know that positions like those of Dror Eydar's aren't uncommon among those who currently hold power in Israel. I know that Netanyahu has to walk a thin line - on one side he has Western partners that can be easily alienated if he causes a humanitarian crisis on the doorstep of Europe, and on the other side he has internal pressures from his partners to cause exactly that type of crisis.
Of course he'll say that he only wants to liberate the hostages and neutralize Hamas. But it's not hard to imagine what he says when he talks to his partner - his off-the-record comments on the Oslo accords are a good example of that.
nostr:npub1n9h6t2gjj77xhk0t9gdxqrc743mnx3g5s5rxrk0u68tagm6cl48smy08g2 it's not a quote, it's my own personal interpretation of a UN representative wearing a yellow star in order to attract sympathy for his government's genocidal campaign.
A shameful attempt of psychological manipulation from #Israel today.
"If you don't support our bombs on the civilians in Gaza, if you don't support our contempt for any ceasefire, if you don't support our total embargo of food of electricity towards Gaza, if you don't support our attempts of creating an ethnic-religious State and grabbing land that international agreements never assigned to us, then you support the Holocaust".
This argument is nothing new - I've heard it many times from the several Israeli fascists. But an official representative bringing this rotten rhetoric to the UN is a point of no return. Israel and its fascist government need to be condemned and sanctioned right now, and expelled from the UN until it starts respecting the UN.
nostr:npub105ve72qqmjxz08skum2lkds9qkj67689djwwr2a0qkrxts3hqydqm9hk8p Look, what you are calling for (fight, sanction) and your emotional language (evil, hate), plus your willingness to condemn all of Israel and make pseudo-psychological explanations for the behaviour of Israelis...
All this makes you no better than any of them, as you do not even have the excuse of being involved in the conflict, and are rather an armchair instigator of war.
I am sorry you speak like this.
nostr:npub1ffeh63h9kke3sjcn3f7kuzh80xdtmey52axtpjjjdfd4cwhum4tq682lmq "Evil" and "hate" are exactly the words the Israeli ambassador used when talking about Gaza in this clip. He slowly repeats "we have to destroy Gaza" three times, with his eyes fill up with hate. How is denouncing hate and putting the right labels onto it a form of hate itself?
Also note that I'm always careful not to condemn all of Israel. I've repeatedly talked about "Israeli State" as "the current Israeli government", not of Israel as a whole. I know that not all the folks over there support Likud and its far-right partners. I know that many of them have taken to the streets when Netanyahu repeatedly tried to neutralize the judicial power in the past few months. I know that many of them are in favour of opening a line of dialogue at least with the exiled PLO/PA and oppose this war.
Not everybody in Israel is a fascist illiberal colonist who wants to wipe out a whole ethnic group and create a theocratic State, but everybody who politically represents Israel right now falls under that category.
Just like not all Palestinians are terrorists who believe in violence as a legitimate mean of getting back all of their lands, but everybody in Hamas falls under that category.
And I'm also not instigating war. I believe that the '67 UN resolution was the best possible deal, and that the Oslo accords actually came quite close to a durable peace. I believe in a two-State solution. Those who instigate war are those who have spent the past 30 years opposing that peace process - and that applies to both the sides of the conflict.
And I'm definitely not saying that a war against Israel is justified. I'm saying that we should make sure not to give a single helmet or bullet, let alone a US air carrier in the Mediterranean, to a country that has decided to respond to an overall moderate-impact attack by basically wiping out a whole region and displacing millions who will soon knock on Europe's doors. And, on top of that, sanctions against Israel would make perfectly sense if we were really ideologically honest - if we put sanctions on Russia for engaging in a colonial campaign, then why aren't we doing the same with Israel?
nostr:npub105ve72qqmjxz08skum2lkds9qkj67689djwwr2a0qkrxts3hqydqm9hk8p you are not careful enough with your words. Calling Israel a Nazi state shows you are not seriously aiming for a solution, but rather at provocation. What is your goal?
nostr:npub1ffeh63h9kke3sjcn3f7kuzh80xdtmey52axtpjjjdfd4cwhum4tq682lmq my label is a response to what I often hear from representatives and sympathizers of this government - including the ambassador in this interview.
"We need all of that land because the Holocaust
It's almost like the evil that they went through allows them to perpetrate the same evil against others. It's almost as if they were allowed to respond with a reaction of the same intensity. How would you call this kind of behaviour and reaction?
nostr:npub1n9h6t2gjj77xhk0t9gdxqrc743mnx3g5s5rxrk0u68tagm6cl48smy08g2 hmm I'm just not sure about this article.
Einstein was actually a supporter of the Zionist cause for most of his life and wanted Jews to get back their home land.
It is sure likely that he opposed the creation of Israel if that meant creating a theocratic State that was in a state of permanent war with its displaced Arab neighbours. But it's very unlikely that he ever said words like "the existence of a Jew State with its own borders and army sits at odds with the essence of Judaism", because for most of his life he actually supported that idea.
nostr:npub105ve72qqmjxz08skum2lkds9qkj67689djwwr2a0qkrxts3hqydqm9hk8p wtf? Don't you see you are no better with your words?
nostr:npub1ffeh63h9kke3sjcn3f7kuzh80xdtmey52axtpjjjdfd4cwhum4tq682lmq sure, words matter. But, in all honesty, how would you label a State whose goal is to completely wipe out a piece of land on an ethnic basis and doesn't seem to care of any of the civilians who live there - and its representatives are also very clear about their intentions?
Forcefully removing people out of their homes to replace them with people of a different ethnic group is called ethnic cleansing.
Confining people in geographical cages with little possibility of movement or integrating into the larger society is called apartheid.
The indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population on an ethnic basis, and the cutting off their supplies of food, water and electricity, is called a genocide.
And preaching the formation of a State with a single homogenous ethnic and religious group is called theocratic fascism.
Words matter, so we should probably start using the right ones.
"We don't care about rational talks, Palestinian people, evacuation plans, partitions etc. We have a single objective: to wipe Gaza out of the face of this earth".
Notice the hate in his eyes and the change in his voice while he speaks of destroying whatever is left of the Palestinian State.
And, of course, he throws the pain and evil the Jews went through the Holocaust as a justification for them to do whatever they want now.
Now repeat after me:
#Israel is a #Nazist State.
#Israel is a #genocidal State.
#Israel, in its current incarnation, with a fascist government that rules it on an ethnic basis, needs to be fought, condemned and sanctioned with all the strength we have if we ever want to see peace in the Middle East. Not supported.
nostr:npub105ve72qqmjxz08skum2lkds9qkj67689djwwr2a0qkrxts3hqydqm9hk8p I’d add two things:
1) Hamas won *one* election but it was almost 20 years ago and Gazans haven’t had a chance to choose their leaders since;
2) Israel would like nothing more than to depopulate the Gaza Strip in order to complete the ethnic cleansing it began in 1948. Evacuation of civilians is not the best solution to this crisis; only a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine can do that.
nostr:npub1fmn92m7d455s5raclhlxh4alyywrmpy6llfrt2sec0ylk0f9nrjsk7hf5g The Palestinian electoral problem is a bit more nuanced IMHO. True, Palestinians haven't been able to hold free elections since 2007. But the truth is that they wouldn't have much choice either - the PLO/PA has been largely confined to the West Bank, and it became voiceless even against the most brutal evictions in the area, and Gaza hasn't even been given the chance to develop a political alternative.
The existence of Hamas is also in Israel's interests after all. Israeli attempts of getting rid of Arafat became more intense once his political position started to become more moderate and open to dialogue in order to attract international sympathy for the Palestinian cause. If Hamas rules Gaza, the PA is basically exiled and powerless, and Gazans are given no choice, then Israel has a good argument for its ethnic cleansing - "we're bombing Gaza because of Hamas and his terrorists".
About the evacuations of civilians problem - yes, I definitely see that. Israel has also made sure to make it hard for Palestinians to come back to their homes if they decide to flee. But if I were in their shoes I may still opt for a sure exile over or a sure death (or at the very least the loss of their homes).
In an ideal world, the UN should have the power to push for a binding agreement that Israel needs to comply to before any land invasion of Gaza. That would include, at the very least, a plan for displaced Palestinians to come back to their homes (which means at the very least the concession of an ID that grants them a refugee status and greater freedom of movement), and a plan where Israel has to detail why such a military operation is the only available option, what's their definition of success and their retreat plan, and what they intend to do with the Gaza strip in case of success - which include a binding agreement that forces them not to repeat the eviction and occupation program they have implemented in the West Bank.
Unfortunately, we all know that such a sensible agreement would never pass the UN Security Council because of the US veto...
Result of the UN vote that requests the protection and evacuation of civilians in Gaza before any attack against Hamas.
It a normal world it would be a no-brainer: civilians should never be targeted in a war, and they should be given the chance to evacuate before a urban battle begins.
Yet, only the following EU countries voted in favour of upholding humanitarian obligations:
- France
- Spain
- Portugal
- Slovenia
- Luxemburg
- Malta
Let's call our politicians accountable on the next elections: their UN representatives have just given their explicit support to an explicit act of genocide.
North Korean hackers broke into corporate networks by pretending to be Meta recruiters on LinkedIn, and sent engineers fake coding assignments that were actually trojans.
Unanswered questions in my mind:
1. Why would you run a coding exercise, given to you by a recruiter for another company, on the laptop you use in your current job?
2. Why are there engineers out there who don't feel alarmed to receive an "assignment.exe" file rather than "assignment.txt"?
3. None of those engineers felt like something was fishy when they received a coding assignment from Meta that simply asked them to write a script that prints Fibonacci numbers?
4. None of those engineers felt that there was something wrong with assignments being shared uniquely through LinkedIn messages, without ever hitting the mailbox with an official @facebook.com email address?
We engineers often think of ourselves as the strong link in the security chain. We think highly of our technical skills, we would never fall into a boomer trap and click on a random unsolicited link received on a, random social media website.
Right? Right....?
There we go - the technological enshittification pandemic has also reached Philips #Hue.
Apparently they weren't making enough money by selling bulbs at $50/70. They'll now force you to log in through their app to the bridge too, or all of your bulbs will just stop working.
They've joined the long wagon of companies that have decided to make the core of their money by scooping up as much data they can and selling it to data brokers rather than selling actual products, and they don't care if doing so means to literally break the lights in the houses of millions of customers.
These companies have turned from customer-centric places, to businesses run by human failures who masturbate while thinking of how much more data they can scoop from their customers, and in how many ways they can break the customer experience if they don't comply with their new data policies.
Of course, I was kind of prepared for this, as I've stopped trusting every single tech company a while ago and build my own infrastructure for everything. I have #Platypush installed on a RPi with a Zigbee dongle and zigbee2mqtt, and it already does the job for a bunch of Hue, Ikea and other cheap Zigbee lights. That's all you need to make your own Zigbee bridge. #HomeAssistant is another popular option, of course.
But it'll still take me a while to unpair ~40 Hue devices in my house from my Hue bridge (which I purchased a decade ago btw) and reconfigure everything on my self-managed bridge.
I used to love being a software engineer, building things and solving problems. Now my job sucks, even as a hobby, and I don't feel anymore like this is what I want to do with my life, nor this is the industry where I want to work.
It's not up to me to decide what to build anymore. It's up to Spotify killing their streaming libraries, Twitter or Reddit killing their API, Hue breaking their products if you don't log in through their app, YouTube coming up with ways to break youtube-dl on a daily basis, Google breaking your browser extensions, Messenger periodically logging out your alternative clients and locking your account, and the list could go on forever.
I wake up in the morning thinking "how did tech companies decided to fuck me up today, and which activities will I be forced to put aside in order to write some code that fixes the shitshow that their lobotomized greedy managers have decided to put up now?"
It sucks. I've reached the point where I'm ready to throw away all the devices in my house that are more complex than a dumb calculator. Congratulations, motherfuckers. You've broken the game for everyone with your greed, and managed to get even someone like ME to hate tech.
One would think that one of the primary features of an app store should be to view and update the installed apps.
That's the kind of feature that you'd expect users to find as soon as they open the app, and that's how stores based on F-Droid (or even alternatives to the Play Store like Aurora) are usually designed.
I hadn't used the Play Store in a while, but I've been moderately amused (but definitely unsurprised) to discover that that's no longer the case for them.
As soon as you open the Play Store, the first screen is now filled with sponsored content.
The option to view or update your apps is now 3 taps away from the main screen, buried under a couple of menus.
Ads defeat obvious UX patterns again.
When we hear praises about Israel's IT industry, we have to keep in mind that those praises are directed to an industry that mostly produces and sells spyware, malware, surveillanceware and any kind of software whose only purpose is to steal data or hack other systems.
And it managed to build such an industry by attracting ITSec talent from all around the world thanks to big salaries kindly provided by its nearly 6% of GDP that goes into military spending.
If, say, Iran were to develop such an industry in such a way, we'd be quick to label it as a terrorist attempt to subvert the world's order.
But since it's Israel doing it, and we as Western countries are the biggest customers of their products, and we've already decided long ago that we support them even if they were to implement their own version of the Holocaust, I guess that it's alright?
nostr:npub1wc2kznjw6kldwzz8eedr9pf208waa8ww3fjsqk0nz4rdv8q663qswt4sk7 this is a naive way of looking at economics.
If something is available in an unlimited supply (or the supply is large enough compared to the demand to be considered unlimited), then yes, if you pay for something you have all the right to get it - as much as you want of it.
That's because your demand is unlikely to trigger a supply shortage, and either push up prices for everyone else, or put heavy constraint on their demand.
That no longer applies when supply is short, or somebody's demand has a strong impact on the supply.
In the first half of 2020, if you saw somebody walk in a shopping mall and buy 50% of the available toilet paper just for its little household, you probably wouldn't have said "oh, if he has the money to buy it then I'm ok with it".
nostr:npub174tr94vmsgf9ldj6n9zd42jtmmajfnjw0tp9us5eewrtfm30w6pstacfav This is the story of the farmer that uses up 1000x more water than everybody else does, and wants us to believe that it's a good thing.
After all, their excessive usage of water helps keep the flow of the river stable, and when there's a drought they are sensible enough to turn off their huge mills, and share some water from their huge tanks with their neighbors.
What a great example of generosity.
nostr:npub1wc2kznjw6kldwzz8eedr9pf208waa8ww3fjsqk0nz4rdv8q663qswt4sk7 Yes, the Texan grid problem was there even before the State became the new haven for miners.
But even a more efficient grid wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
We're talking of **10%** (or more in some areas) of the energy demand of a *whole state* sucked up only by a tiny bunch of businesses and individuals - and all of that energy goes up in cracking pointless puzzles for a distributed Ponzi scheme.
For context, even the former Ilva in Taranto (a huge steel factory that covers a big chunk of the city and gives jobs to ~10-20% of the local population) consumes only a fraction of that amount.
If you make the grid better without changing the mindset, and without cracking down on those who make an irrational usage of shared resources, then all you get is more miners, not a less strained grid.
But Texans are way too scared of socialism to dare to even have a say in how a company should behave. Even when the market goes dysfunctional and a couple of companies start literally stealing from everybody else.
Even when that happens, the State still prefer to pay a bribe with public money to the rich folks to convince them to shut down their gambling den at least for a bit, rather than giving that money to those who need it the most in the middle of a heatwave.
I fully blame all of this on capitalism, yes.