 We should not be optimising Mastodon so it can handle more people per server. We should be optimising Mastodon so it incentivises more serves with fewer people. (And if you take that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you arrive at the idea behind the Small Web: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/) Greta Thunberg: The Climate Event I’d highly recommend making time in your calendar to watch this speech. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ropBOwPvmLM (Apologies for the YouTube link.) Also, now that I’m back at my computer, here’s a non-YouTube link to Greta Thunberg’s “The Climate Event” talk on an Invidious instance: You know the #fediverse isn’t just #Mastodon, right? :) Do you live stream? Check out https://owncast.online It’s a lightweight free and open live-steaming server. (We use it at Small Technology Foundation for our streams at https://owncast.small-web.org) And you can follow people’s Owncast servers from the fediverse and get notified when they’re about to start streaming, etc. (e.g., hit the follow button on our stream and enter your Mastodon/fediverse account) :awesome:  @aral it also has very useful and unique fediauth in chat. Owncast bot just sends one time password in DMs.
Saying you work in Big Tech because you want to “change it from within” is like saying you’re a butler for the royal family because you want to overthrow the monarchy. #BigTech #peopleFarming #surveillanceCapitalism #developer #designer #engineer #complicity
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@aral yeah, that’s also why many CEOs regret going public: changes might happen, but mostly in the direction of shareholders’ interests 😖 Still, if you think about individuals working in big tech, they have a chance to learn a lot, grow, help others, and bring different points of view both in and outside the company. And while big companies usually do not stray too much from their paths, people can and at some point they might bring something which is valuable to everyone.
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So in case you’re wondering (like I was) why @gitea is not hosted on Gitea but still at GitHub, it’s apparently because they’re locked in by GitHub who are drip feeding them their data with extremely low rate limits. This is an outrage. A trillion-dollar company (Microsoft) is holding a free and open source competitor’s repository hostage on their systems. Who do we pressure at GitHub to provide Gitea with all their data ASAP? Thoughts? Have y’all heard Blender is moving to Gitea? Neat!
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 “Russia warns humanity at risk if West seeks to punish it over Ukraine” Funny, I wasn’t aware Russia had any humanity left. Oh, you mean… “The idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear potentials is absurd. And potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity…” In other words, “Russia poses a threat to the existence of humanity.” Thanks for stating the obvious. We know. The only question is how do we neutralise this threat? Seeing a lot of #fediverse accounts without any profile information… Folks, if you want us to follow you, please, tell us a little about your account. You don’t have to post a photo of yourself or identify yourself if you don’t want to but please take a moment to tend to your profile so it says something about why it exists and what we can expect if we follow it. It’s also helpful if your make an #introduction post. (You can also pin that to your account.) Suggestion: let’s make April 11th, the #fediverse #profileDay (#deetsDay?) (411*, get it?) :) A day in which we all make an effort to update our profiles. Thoughts/suggestions? (I realise the first one would be a year away but there’s nothing stopping you from tending to yours today) :) * slang for information or “deets**” (from the telephone code in some counties for directory information) ** slang for details  @aral viele Konten ohne Profilinformationen Leute, wenn ihr wollt, dass wir euch folgen, erzählt uns bitte ein wenig über euren Account. Ihr müsst kein Foto von euch posten oder euch identifizieren, wenn ihr das nicht wollt, aber nehmt euch bitte einen Moment Zeit, um euer Profil zu pflegen, damit es etwas darüber aussagt, warum es existiert und was wir erwarten können, wenn wir ihm folgen. Mastodon – Simplified Federation by @rugk makes remote follows less cumbersome by automatically entering your Mastodon account details and puts that functionality where it should be: in your browser. You can get it for Firefox from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplified-federation/ #mastodon #remoteFollow #federation #usability #tip #firefox #extension I just installed the latest Postmarket OS (with Phosh) on a Pinephone and goodness they have come a long way. The OS is basically usable. Which is amazing on such an underpowered device. Also, convergence worked for me for the first time :) And yeah, I could easily use this with Helix Editor + git for development work on the go. (Keep in mind my daily dev machine is a 16-core desktop with 64GB RAM. So, no, it’s not the same experience. But is it usable? Heck yes.)
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So just a quick follow-up: this is still nowhere near ready for everyday use by everyday folks as you basically need to use the console/ssh to install apps (Software is not currently working). Just a heads up. If you’re a dev, sure, play with it and maybe even help make it better. I’ve switched my sim card over to it as a small experiment to see how much it changes my everyday experience.  BreakingCode News: "With the pilot distracted at the wheel, the copilot thought it had a license to violate the unsuspecting passengers. Some paid to have their trust betrayed" e.g., you’re building an app from source and you were at commit fc8c4883. You just pulled the latest changes and you want to know what’s changed since your last update: git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit fc8c4883~1..HEAD There you go, your nice, neat change list comprising commit messages awaits :) (The key bit is the X~1..HEAD, everything else is just formatting.)  Or this variant: no need to know the commit, works after a pull. If you cannot criticise the West without glorifying Russia and China, there’s something very very wrong with you. @aral The old consultancy addage, of "if you're not part of the solution, there's a lot of money to be made perpetuating the problem" 🙄 Want an example of where Fedora Silverblue 36 trumps the usability of macOS? See the gorgeous new screenshot feature (part of GNOME 42). 1. What do you press to take a screenshot on a Mac? I keep forgetting the silly combination… On my machine, it’s the Print Screen button. 2. The screenshot feature is entirely intuitive with no hidden functionality; it remembers your choices and lets you record stills or videos. 😍 #usability #design #fedora #fedoraSilverblue #gnome #macOS #linux
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 @aral On my Mac it is: Shift + Cmd + 4 + two goodwill wishes to Tim Cook + wiggle, all while my knees shake as I hope I have not angered the Apple overlord. My Linux box is KDE, and, like with Gnome, I just ask politely while I set my own keyboard shortcut. It’s been a while since I used Gnome, but your screenshot makes it look cool 😎! @aral the same was previously possible by default hotkeys (Shift+PrintScreen). Sad, that those were dropped. :-( A friendly reminder that you should make sure CPU virtualisation is turned on in your BIOS before creating a virtual machine (in this case, using GNOME Boxes) https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-boxes/-/issues/799 #virtualisation #bios #settings #errorMessages #design #usability  @aral It's one of Unix philosophy design principles, by the way: if a program fails it should make as much stink about it as possible. Linux life hack: say you have a page open in Firefox on your Linux machine and you want to view it on your phone (and you don’t have some fancy integration between the two)… Instead of typing in the URL, get the FxQRL extension that shows you a QR code of the current tab’s URL and aim your phone’s camera at it. Boom! :) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fxqrl/ #linux #lifeHack #firefox #extension #web #QRcode #mobile #browser  EU Commission’s latest attempt to backdoor your privacy tries the Trump era William Barr justice department “think of the children” playbook. No one thinks we shouldn’t do everything in our power to combat child sexual abuse. Some of us just don’t want to destroy the fundamental human right to privacy (and every other human right that’s based on it) in the process. https://mastodon.ar.al/web/@EU_Commission@social.network.europa.eu/108306318245441012 What do I mean by “the Trump era William Barr justice department “think of the children” playbook?” This: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2019/10/william-barr-and-winnie-pooh |
Gregory's Server
Food for thought: The bigger mastodon.social gets, the less successful the #fediverse is.
Sadly, the fundamental design of Mastodon mirrors the design of Big Tech (a server architecture that can support hundreds of thousands of “users”) and thus inherits its success criteria.
I feel it’s time we at least started thinking about what the web would look like if we all had our own place on it and what it would take to get there from here.
#decentralisation #centralisation #fediverse #SmallWeb