7bicycles [he/him]

I think the main issue that usually gets trod out is how Microsoft makes the most ergonomical and useable software which I think is an argument you can only arrive at if you’ve just literally used nothing else, ever. The supposed point is that large swathes of the work force in the public sector would be unable to cope with the new software and be unable to do their job, albeit I point at my printing out excel tables example there to say they already don’t know how to use software so at least save on the licensing fees

What will they use instead? Who the fuck knows! The article omits this crucial piece of information.

Whole bunch of shit going by different sources and the state itself from german, to supplement here

MS Office -> LibreOffice Exchange / Outlook -> Open-XChange / Thunderbird Sharepoint -> Nextcloud Windows -> Linux MS Active Directory -> Unknown, but currently Testing things Telephones use, among others, Kamailio, RTPEngine, Asterisk, GenieACS, Loki and Grafana For all the Software to do like specific work, i.e. the software that helps manage industrial permits or whatever, it’s case by case with them trying to replace them with mostly web based solutions so they’re OS-Agnostic.

They’re doing this together with Dataport, which is a sort of special government structure in the sense that it does IT for the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and Saxony-Anhalt who share the costs. They’ve been at this whole thing of trying to make a FOSS standard software enviroment for years now, steadily improving, so things might actually be happening. Video conferencing should be Jitsi, that’s already in the portfolio, the chat components will in all likelihood be based on the Matrix Protocol which is aswell, I think they offer an offshoot of Riot.

It’s a good thing. That said, the way the german government works this only really includes the actual state level bureaucratic engines. Everything at the county and municipal level will also have to make the switch themselves so that’s 83 more government entities that would have to do this before the state runs on FOSS.

And like with all of them in germany they’re all flat out broke and can’t get personnel for this so this type of project, if attempted at all, is usually headed by a 60 year old who’s also the equivalent of a CIO because he once built an excel table with pivot functions and the general level of digital competency of the workforce is dire, as in people are printing out excel tables to do the calculations with a calculator and things of that nature.

us?

If this is considered a problem of individual personnal responsibility then I will trigger stateccollapse

fucking go for it, king.

The entire concept of data privacy is antithetical to the modern nation state. Motherfucker you live in the hole. You are in the oubliette. What fucking governmeant bureau, under trump, do you see taking up the fight here, much less winning? You can’t unleak data. That shit’s out there, forever - and, again, probably has been for years considering what a goldmine the DNA databse of the USA is.

Lobby your state all your want, IT-Security and Data Protection starts at you. All the encryption in the world doesn’t save you from being spear-phished. You can encode this in law, but unless anybody starts executing legal entities and building the great firewall á la china, that shit’s out there in a real “can’t unlick that asshole” situation. It sucks! It is bad! The average person should not have to grapple with the realities of IT-Security and Data Protection much in the same way I don’t have the first fucking clue about how to keep an NPP from exploding. But unless we reinvent the whole thing from scratch that shit’s on you, me, and everybody else. Never give them anything. I own 18 bicycles.

23andme was named “invention of the year” by Time in 2008

perfect, I am now openly pro Trump, Zuckerberg and also Putin, all of whom have been named Time Person of the year from 2007 onwards. This is because I don’t even bother to understand what Time nominates, but also entirely willing to base very important political or life decisions around this. If you call this out as being incredibly fucking stupid you are victim blaming me. Just because I do not have ever read the magazines nominations of awards that I base my being around does not mean you can attack me for this.

Orphans, people with absent parents, decedents of slaves, the list goes on for folks who would understandably go for an affordable way to access their genetic history.

This is slightly more sympathetic but also 23andme would help you zilch in this scenario because this is not what they do. But I do understand how coming from a vulnerable emotionial position might lead you there.

I’m saddened to see more victim blaming here than anger at the ToS/privacy policy fuckery and a complete lack of consumer protection.

Having said beforementioned, there is 0 consumer protection that would prevent this scenario. This bullshit has to rank among the largest DNA Databse in the world, and, as such, would be the target and has probably been leaked to every major and minor intelligence service in the world since years, even before they just openly sold it off to god knows who. The crux of data security is that while it is a society wide issue, it is also a personal issue. You can’t outregulate some idiot just handing over all their data for funsies or SECURITY to whatever entity, to point out the big ones. This holds true regardless of socioeconomic system in place, because the entire point is that it is your data, not anybody elses.

Also, and I do agree I am malding over this, I want to point out that people have been warning about 23andme for a decade for obvious reasons and largely got ignored as being doomer nerds

The worst part is there is cool, if very boomer dad coded, ancestry research. It however involves reading a lot and lot of bureaucratic documents from hundreds of years ago and attaining quite some fields of knowledge to figure out how names shaped over time, how the bureaucratic institution in $time and $place work and such.

A friend of mine does it and he can trace one root of his family back to the 15th century within like a 30km radius circle. It’s really cool to see where, when, and therefore likely why, his family moved about for 500 years to end up where they are now instead of getting “you are probably from europe and 2% neanderthal”