Thomas Pfeiffer @colomar@fosstodon.org

@kde officially endorses the Global Climate Strike tomorrow, September 20th (see the banner on https://kde.org)!

We are aware that "There is no Free Software on a dead planet", so we encourage everyone to join your local Climate Strike march tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) so that we still have a future for Free Software to strive in.

Find your local march on https://globalclimatestrike.net/

Humble Bundle currently has three bundles that might be of interest to some of you:
"IT Security by Taylor & Francis" (DRM-free ebooks)
"Level Up Your Python" (ebooks, software (proprietary, so probably not interesting for you guys) and videos)
"Become a Game Developer" (ebooks and videos about Unity development)

I guess the IT Security one is potentially the most interesting ( https://www.humblebundle.com/books/information-technology-security-books )

I am in no way affiliated with Humble Bundle, I just share because I care ;)

https://www.humblebundle.com/ currently gives away DiRT Rally for free if you subscribe to their newsletter (or if you are already subscribed).
It runs natively on Linux!

I'm in no way affiliated with Humble Bundle and I don't get anything out of sharing this, I just like them and like Linux games.

Thank you @federicomena for reminding people how to disclose security vulnerabilities (especially in FOSS projects) in a way that is beneficial for everyone.

We need people who check open source code for security vulnerabilities, because bugs only become shallow if enough eyeballs actually turn to them.
But we also need those people to report them in a way that does not do harm.

https://people.gnome.org/~federico/blog/on-responsible-vulnerability-disclosure.html

Last month, in order to block a climate bill, Oregon Republicans fled the state and threatened to attack police sent out to retrieve them.

That's one fine democracy you have there, America...

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/guns-over-votes-oregon-republicans-kill-climate-bill-by-quorum/

After I've just rejected another project offer from a company whose company values I disagree with, I started thinking: Wouldn't it be great if all of us IT people could band together and sign a pledge not to work for unethical companies?

If enough of us did it, given how hard it is to find good people in our line of work, we could have a real impact!

Agreeing on a definition of "ethical" would not be easy, but I bet we could find some common ground.

Let me know if this proposal makes sense!

The recruiter's reply to my message was very kind and understanding. I gotta say: As problematic as Amazon is, AWS's recruiting staff seems to be top notch!

@bignose Was their reaction to your answer equally understanding?

I think we - the community of skilled IT professionals - often aren't fully aware of the kind of power we would wield over many industries if we all made corporate responsibility a top priority in deciding whom to work for.
Given how hard it is to find good IT professionals, if most of us did what @bignose did and now I did as well, corporations who aren't responsible would be really screwed.

After the AWS recruiter replied "Should anything change in the future please do let me know!", I took @bignose suggestion to heart and replied:
"Definitely!
As soon as Amazon and its subsidiaries use 100% renewable energy, pay all their workers a living wage, stop participating in surveillance, and stop aggressively attempting to monopolize markets (I know AWS itself is better than your parent company in many of these points, but it's still a subsidiary after all), I will be very happy to apply!

I just got a message on LinkedIn recruiting for Amazon Web Services at Dublin. This was my reply:

"Thank you for your message! I am glad to hear that you find my profile interesting, and Dublin would be a great place to work at, but I have to say that I don't see myself working for an Amazon subsidiary. Amazon's values and mine are too far apart for that, unfortunately."

It did feel cool to be approached by AWS, but nope, I won't contribute to their quest for world domination.