I'm a CS student, I have some time before I graduate and have kind of dipped my toes in various things without specializing in anything. I would like to know what would be useful for the movement, so that I can use my skills to contribute.

And before people say "everything is useful"...well yeah but it's nice and fulfilling to have specific ideas I can work on learning/building myself.

Also where can I find leftist open source projects? I know lemmy and this website for one are open source but not sure of others.

    • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Bug bounties unfortunately suck. The ones paying a ton are basically evil digital mercenary companies that sell the exploits to gulf state monarchs or the NSA. The companies whose software is vulnerable will pay like a fraction of it because otherwise their own staff would leave and become contractors

      But still, I agree with this. Develop and use exploits and tools. In addition to on the ground organizing as others have say, I would say knowing how to take down systems and protect others is critical if something major happens and it’s no longer a LARP, or if you simply want to make a message when some asshole does something.

      I’m not going to advocate to joining some soulless defense contractors, but a lot of pentesting gets you close to large companies and governments without directly benefitting from children being murdered.