What To Do If You Suddenly Find Yourself Homeless

URGENT: get the hell off Apache OpenOffice, it's insecure and not worked on any more. LibreOffice is better in literally every way.

you know OpenOffice, right? free substitute for Microsoft Office which is basically just as good, but free.

well, it’s not as good. and is in fact actively dangerous to use.

the security hole: HWP files can be exploited and pwn your PC. obscure minor format, no problem … except that if you get a HWP file with a .DOC extension - say, what appears to be a MS Word file emailed you by anyone - you can get pwned by that.

they’ve known about this since april 2015 and haven’t fixed it. they have distributed over 8 million known-vulnerable copies of AOO since 27 april. (and the 143 million vulnerable before that.)

the fix is, literally, remove one file from the installer. they haven’t got it together to do this in five months.

tell everyone you know. tell your writer friends. tell your family with that old copy.  tell anyone you see running OpenOffice. get LibreOffice, it also originated in OpenOffice but is actually developed and they show the slightest sign of caring about their end users. LO 5.0 is really very nice. much faster to use than 4.4 too.

so what’s going on here:

Sun Microsystems (mild yay) ran OpenOffice from 2000 to 2010. it was imperfect, but it was good enough and free and open-source. it accumulated one heck of a famous brand name. (“we need an office program” “how about that openoffice thing”)

Oracle (boo hiss!) bought Sun in early 2010. OpenOffice development stopped as they reassigned developers.

a bunch of non-Sun/Oracle developers went “bugger this” and forked it (‘cos it was open source) in late 2010. thus, LibreOffice, which immediately became stupidly better.

Oracle had a snit and shoved the corpse of OpenOffice at the Apache Foundation in mid-2011 at the behest of IBM, who wanted to do it their way.

Apache OpenOffice had nothing worth the trouble, but got downloads because of the famous “OpenOffice” brand name.

IBM gave up in late 2013. since then, AOO has literally been sixteen ex-Sun devs squatting the name and doing bugger-all with it. their reasons are unclear.

they insist they still have a product, even though what they’ve actually achieved has been to put over eight million downloads that they knew were vulnerable on people’s PCs. possibly your PC.

instead of fixing it, by removing one file from the installer, they post excuses for not doing stuff.

(if this sounds like a fascinating tale, feel free to check the extensively-cited history sections of the OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice articles on wikipedia, which i mostly researched and wrote.)

Apache OpenOffice’s lack of developers since IBM gave up is extensively documented. many have expressed concerns over the BLATANT SECURITY HOLE. in late august a Red Hat developer posted an open letter urging them to just give up the pretense and redirect the end users (that’s you) to LibreOffice. this had wide impact, and quite a pile of others concurred that they need to stop making life actively worse for the end users. the AOO people posted numerous comments making excuses … but they still distribute their known dangerous software and just won’t lift a finger to fix it.

tl;dr: get the hell off OpenOffice, get everyone you know the hell off OpenOffice. get LibreOffice, it is strictly superior in literally every dimension, and they actually give a damn about you the user and fix the security holes.

this text is CC-0 public domain. please spread far and wide. 

The Canadian Senate has passed an amendment to a transgender rights bill that would ban trans people from using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Now, trans people in Canada (and their trans supporters in the United States) are sharing photos on Twitter and Facebook of themselves in public bathrooms they would be legally obligated to use under Senator Donald Plett’s bill. Check the hashtags #PlettPutMeHere and #WeJustNeedToPee for a dynamite collection of trans folks showing why these laws are absurd. Badass. (via BuzzFeed)

Reblog if Black Lives Matter to you

Where are those woke white people at!?

We Need Your Help!!

Recently my job has been severely cutting hours. To the point where my partner and I have been working bare minimum and they refuse to let us take on more hours than scheduled. Which doesn’t sound like a big problem, but we barely afford everything when we work 40hrs+overtime. 

With this recent cut, we can afford rent and very few bills.

Our rent is around 800$, plus car insurance, phone bills and my medical bills.

What we can NOT afford is food. We’re eating all that’s left in our cupboard right now, but that will run out soon. Even when we get paid next this week, it won’t be enough to feed us through the following week.

We get paid minimum wage. And we are about to starve.

So what can you do to help? 

We’re not asking for much but every little bit helps.

You can commission me or simply donate to our paypal: soeki-pixie@live.com

My commission post is here, but you can see more examples of my art here.

Please consider helping us out. Both my partner and I would really appreciate it.

Please signal boost if you can, Thank you!!

Femsolid

…is now screenshotting me, because i blocked and reported them.

This is after they posted pre- and post-hrt photos of me on a terf blog.

I feel like someone’s gonna find me or recognize me and kill me.

I feel like I can never stand up to people who hate us again.

I’m even more worried about when they do this to a kid who’s a lot more vulnerable than me.

Please report and block femsolid.

Please, please signal boost if you give a fuck about trans women.

This is one of the most violent terfs on this site.

can we just like, all agree to boycott tumblr for 24 hours to show the staff that we’re pissed about the update? because they have to track usage and stuff like that, and I feel like it would send a pretty big message if enough people did it. like nothing fancy, just don’t use tumblr from 12:00am to 11:59pm, one whole day of nothing, not even mobile blogging. maybe set up one queue’d post explaining why you’re boycotting (so anyone that doesn’t get the memo would know what’s up) but other than that maybe even stop queues (just for the day) to help send the message.

I’d propose Wednesday, September 9th as the day. That’s one week after the update, one week to give it a try, one week to show the staff that we’re not just overreacting to change (the way people are apt to do on the internet) but are serious about not liking the way they’ve changed our blogging experience. That also gives us a week to get this post around the site: long enough to spread it around, but not so long that people forget that we’re going to do this. Maybe set a reminder on your phone or computer so that you don’t forget. I’ll be posting in the tag #updateboycott throughout the week for general reminders and to answer any questions/suggestions.

And please, reblog this. The only way this will work is if enough people see this post and participate to make a difference. 

so tl;dr: hate the update? join the boycott of tumblr on Wednesday, September 9th from 12:00am to 11:59pm by just not using tumblr that day. 

Thanks.

reblog for trans wario

reblog if you are PANSEXUAL, support PANSEXUALS, or if you CRY a LOT when you think about STEVEN UNIVERSE

Damn man…

foods that will poison cats:

alcohol 

chocolate

caffeine

dairy products (adults turn lactose intolerant)

fat trimmings, raw meat, eggs, fish

grapes and raisins

onions and garlic

tuna (when not made for cats)

xylitol (artificial sweetener)

if you have a cat please reblog this