Ugh, I want an affordable tiny electric smart car. US is always a buzzkill.

Very resourceful links! Thanks! I wasn’t doubting there are issues regarding Signal, especially considering its ties to the US, as I saw a video regarding its controversies. My point I wanted to make is there is no 100% secure application, and there will be bugs and vulnerabilities among applications we think we can trust. I believe Signal is still a major improvement regarding security, at least compared to Discord, but I would prefer XMPP, Matrix, etc. if I had the choice. Though I understand if an encrypted system is compromised, it’s just as a good as being unencrypted, so if it turns out the US is getting sufficient information from Signal through a backdoor and the subpoena I mentioned was just for show, I hope PSL would consider migrating to Matrix or something more trustworthy. Then again, when the going gets tough, we may have to abandon our phones and electronics to stay safe and find ways to make revolutionary change under a police state.

Even Matrix isn’t perfect. I would consider Signal and Matrix to be pretty secure and recommended for activist organization, until the US decides to force Signal to open a backdoor into its end-to-end encryption. Signal only provided the account number, last connection date, and account creation date (in unix time format, lol) when the California grand jury issued a subpoena. Signal has also threatened to leave the US and the UK if they passed their anti-encryption bills.

Signal is not without criticism, though, considering their controversial cryptocurrency project.

From my experience so far in my pre-branch, we have been much better at maintaining our signal chats, restricting old users from the chats and not retaining old messages in previous temporary chats. I believe this is more of an issue with this local chapter, and I am glad that at least this wasn’t a dangerous person as you suggested burning the chapter. I can see your viewpoint, but I think the first thing to be done is to privately message the party so that we can internally discuss this and resolve the matter through democratic centralist means. That’s appropriate for any situation generally, and perhaps if this escalated and the party made poor decisions after this, then bring this to the attention of the national party, and then maybe mention it publically without exposing sensitive information (and censor a little better when showing screenshots).

I hope I am not saying too much, but I am also working on alternatives for google products within my pre-branch, and other members were going to mention their concerns about the security of using big tech tools before I suggested to help. I’m just one IT person, and I am already contributing a major difference as this pre-branch grows.

Hey, I am just as critical in regards to security and socialist parties including my own, and I do want the party to improve on their opsec and prioritize open source, self-hosted, and encrypted/sandboxed/etc. tools, but blasting this onto twitter without the party’s consent isn’t very responsible. I don’t know if you are the same user as the one on twitter, but I do apologize for the experience and this is something I believe the local chapter as well as the national party should improve upon. I joined the party with the goal to contribute my IT skills to make the party more secure.

I’m still a bit new and still learning, and I am being careful about not sharing internal only information, but locally we do work on different trainings, and I may be helping organize one related to security. We need more IT comrades to help with the party in order to realize changes to our technical infrastructure, especially when we become larger and reach later stages of organizing and begin shining in the surveillance industrial complex’s radar. Simply slandering the organization by posting internal information does not help, especially for this issue regarding a hole in their security.

OP, I apologize this has been your experience.

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/3730331

This is my comment made a bit earlier to encourage tech literate comrades to join their local org as they can help improve their IT infrastructure and opsec.

https://x.com/hornetnezt/status/1762437507675779517

I do agree with this person. I think this would have been handled better privately even though this info is helpful. In the pre-branch I am in, we do take opsec seriously and want to find alternatives to improve our security. I’m sure other local branches would be open to change if more IT comrades joined and made their voice heard.

I believe PSL worked with tools that were most convenient and accessible to them at the time. Plus, while I hate big tech tools and prefer self-hosted solutions, the security of Google, Microsoft, and other mainstream products is nothing to scoff at (ignoring backdoors built in for the feds), though your privacy goes down the drain. PHP originally self-hosted their git repository and had to migrate to their mirror on GitHub after they were compromised.

Time is of the essence to build class consciousness among the proletariat. We have been raising awareness of the genocide in Palestine, and I don’t believe our organization is working in vain by running a campaign and accruing members and resources. Our current campaign isn’t simply to win office. Of course there’s extremely little chance we will win. The campaign is an invitation for workers to join an communist organization to fight for a better world, and the presidential election is definitely not a time to be quiet as more people are paying attention to politics now. Revolution is not going to happen overnight, and we are still emerging in the US.

I can confirm they will appreciate it, listen to your ideas, suggestions, and concerns, and find ways for you to contribute or consider/accept your offers to do projects for them. I’m a member of PSL and serve as their IT. I want to encourage IT comrades to join. We need all the help we can get. You can make a difference; it’s a workers’ democratic party after all.

I only use reddit when I search online for recommendations or answers to questions (usually computer related). Otherwise, I am not really using my account anymore. Because of the reddit exodus, most lemmy instances are filled with extremely toxic people. It makes me a little sick to my stomach when observing or interacting with them. I am siloed into lemmygrad mostly, using other instances and social media to spread info for a socialist cause, even if I don’t do it well sometimes. When I work with PSL, it’s a breath of fresh air.

I received like 10 downvotes within the first minute and not a single upvote, which is much faster than what I normally see even with the downvoting bots, and it was a post (which I deleted immediately, so few people probably saw it) of a video from a reactionary youtube channel, but I thought the topic was interesting, but could have been possibly conspiratorial. I tried to be clear in the description of my thoughts and to clarify my intentions, but it was still getting downvoted heavily, and I had a feeling some lemmygraders were active at that time. My goal with my posts here is to avoid spreading mis/disinformation or reactionary thoughts. Since I am working with PSL, one of the principles we need to follow is to maintain democratic centralism and to be consistent with the messages of the party and avoid accidentally undermining them by personalizing them with negative connotations: https://www.liberationschool.org/social-media-and-democratic-centralism-opportunities-and-challenges/

I believe my post was breaking the spirit of this community and probably provided little/poor substance and could have led newcomers to trust reactionary content. I was sick that day and was getting a bit carried away with my posts. I think the rest of my posts were okay.

I appreciate your response, and I do feel pretty comfortable here being myself and posting things that interest me. And I like providing content and comments to help people here, especially if I think of something I noticed hasn’t been mentioned. I have learned a lot here, and I want to be able to give back more than I have received in this world. I know reading theory is not the only way to help the working class as a comrade, especially considering how valuable experience in the real world and working with a party or union is. I just believe I am at a point where I need to start reading more to help me flesh out my understanding of ML, and I believe I am good at giving layman explanations to complex topics, thus I want to do so to help other people learn.

I think your English is well enough. Any typos I see here just get filtered through my brain anyway, and most people wouldn’t notice. I see people here are kind when they unsure if the wrong word is used. I think this should be the least of your worries.

It took me a lot of courage to post here. I made one bad post that I am still embarassed about and deleted once I noticed it received many downvotes immediately, meaning it was likely not just libs from other instances. Sometimes I overshare or get a bit “reckless” with my posts and comments, especially when I am sick from work and/or my deliriously overworked brain is loopy but still awake enough to post mindlessly here. My advice is if you want to post something without fear of backlash, try to get a sense of the “vibe” and culture of the community and post something in a similar vain. I can tell you lemmygrad is probably the best community I have been in online. Lemmy.ml is now worse than reddit in my opinion (at least, small community subreddits before they are flooded with libs and Nazis), but that’s probably due to all of the lemmy.worlders and other toxic, fascist/neolib echo chambers in most other instances downvoting and harassing posts that are remotely left and challenge their narrow worldviews. Heck, I have been downvoted from other instances making harmless Linux jokes. People here are kind and understanding. We’re comrades after all. Just make sure to do your research and avoid making posts that break rules or could be interpreted reactionary. I would start off making posts from articles or videos that other comrades here post from, but I would try to post something new. By rule of thumb, I usually search the thing I want to post first to avoid making a repost (especially if recent). I believe that is part of forum netiquette. Lemmy will sometimes tell you if you are creating a post that’s already made with the same url, I believe, which is nice.

I haven’t read theory yet, but I tend to get a good grasp on ideas expressed in lemmygrad, PSL, etc. I think reading theory, especially with a reading group under a party to help explain things like the meaning behind Lenin’s writings (I recommend this class from Brian Becker (it’s very engaging, too): https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PLlpc6eFEd8ovixEvkHxXsJLRxqTUcyw-v), would probably help me improve the quality and accuracy of my posts and comments. I try to be a sponge here, open-minded and willing to take criticism, especially since I’m the noob here. I am very busy and overworked, and I struggle with time management. It’s difficult for me to fit time for myself to read, especially with working at a thinly staffed corporation, long commute, many projects, many devices breaking down that I need to fix or replace, working with PSL, needing to support my mom, etc. I am going to start doing a class with PSL soon, though, so that should help me.

Who would win?

The US paper tiger spreading itself so thin

vs

Your workplace’s toilet paper

I know this doesn’t help their issue regarding Windows, but my mind immediately defaulted into thinking about KDE’s taskbar customization and how easy and powerful it is. I provided some Windows solutions in my comment in this thread, but Microsoft devs tend to break things a lot. If some power user wants to go this far to customize their machine, switching to Linux just makes more sense at this point, but I know not everyone can easily migrate. I would suggest people get a second device or use a virtual machine to practice Linux on until they are more comfortable to use it as their main workstation. Then if they need to use Windows for some reason, they could run Windows in virtual machine. If they have the hardware for it, they can passthrough their gpu for gaming, rendering, etc.

1. https://www.uubyte.com/blog/how-to-make-taskbar-icons-bigger-on-windows-10/

2. https://tweaker.ramensoftware.com/

3. I don’t know if this provides the feature you are looking for: https://chrisandriessen.nl/taskbarx

Note, I believe the first method no longer works on Windows 11 after patch KB5022913. I see this for Windows 11: https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-icon-size I haven’t tried any of these methods myself.

I need some comically large quotes for our “democracy”, too.

“functioning” (I need some comically large quotes.)

Note, they are different in meaning, too. “To each according to their work” regards early stages of communism, and “to each according to their need” is achieved during a successful transition to complete communism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution

https://www.boycotzionism.com/

A single gpu passthrough is also possible now

https://github.com/QaidVoid/Complete-Single-GPU-Passthrough

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BUSrdUoedTo