Gregory's Server
Aral Balkan
“But, hey, if you don’t like it, just use a different bionic eye company!”
Maybe “voting with your wallet” isn’t the all-encompassing answer some folks seem to think it is… 🤔
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Aral Balkan
MoviePass “will use facial recognition and eye-tracking technology to ensure that viewers eyes are looking at promoted content in exchange for access to films.” https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/moviepass-track-eyes-phone-cameras-b2013273.html May I just say: fuck these people.
Aral Balkan
The correct answer is always “Meta? You mean Facebook. Those cunts.” 
Dr. Quadragon ❌
@aral I'm frustrated that they stole the word "meta" all for themselves. I used to define Fediverse as social metanetwork (i.e. network of social networks). Now I can't do it with a straight face. Or gay face. Or any face. In fact, you can't associate with mr. Zuckerberg without losing face. Which he'll inevitably pick up and put into his book. Hence the name.
Aral Balkan
“Mistakes were made.” – Emperor Palpatine
Aral Balkan
Corporations are the worst thing to happen to humanity since the invention of organised religions.
Aral Balkan
If you’re working on creating artificial scarcity, may I just say from the bottom of my heart, fuck you, stop doing that like some fucking psychopath and go fix some real problems to improve people’s lives instead of fucking them up even more. Thank you.
≋Y≋A≋C≋A≋R≋É≋🧉🐊
@aral indeed, artificial scarcity is anti-human behaviour. Funny how not long ago people dreamed about a post-scarcity future, how disappointing
Aral Balkan
I’m old enough to remember when rows in a database were free.
Aral Balkan
So apparently Fortinet listed the web0 manifesto as a phishing site (likely because some crypto techbro got butthurt). A lovely member of the community saw it and contacted them to have it fixed. And now it’s listed under Information Technology.
Aral Balkan
The value of a good teacher is as much in what they don’t teach you as in what they do. A good designer, in what they remove as much as in what they add. A good developer, in the code they don’t write… a good friend, in what they don’t say or do… When evaluating what good is, the absence of certain things can be just as important, if not more so, than the presence of certain other things.
Aral Balkan
What’s that? Have over 220 people, projects, and organisations signed the web0 manifesto since last night? They sure have! 🎉
Aral Balkan
The difference between a closed, algorithmically-curated silo like Twitter and the fediverse. Same post. Twitter: ~43K “followers”, 8 boosts, 58 likes Your thousands of “followers” on Twitter mean nothing because the algorithm (i.e., Twitter, Inc.) decides who gets to hear you. 
Attila Kinali
@aral Or it could be because on the fediverse there are more people who are critical of big tech companies than on twitter. Aka sampling bias.
Aral Balkan
The Three Laws of Personal Devices Law 1: Your devices must work in your interests and your interests alone. https://ar.al/2021/12/18/the-three-laws-of-personal-devices/
Aral Balkan
The Three Laws of Personal Devices Law 2: When a feature can be built so that algorithms and data are kept exclusively on the person’s own device, it must be built that way. … https://ar.al/2021/12/18/the-three-laws-of-personal-devices/
Aral Balkan
I don’t know who needs to hear this but… Privacy isn’t: - A premium feature Privacy is: - A basic human right.
Aral Balkan
Bloody hell, the #bitcoin crowd have discovered my latest privacy post. So listen up: a billion identical copies of a database isn’t decentralisation. It isn’t a prerequisite for privacy. And if it destroys our habitat, it’s a crime against humanity. You can show yourselves out.
Aral Balkan
A little reminder that teaching “anti-capitalism” has been banned in English schools for over a year now. The dystopia is now. PS. Here’s a nice extracurricular reading list: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/50617/1/the-ultimate-anti-capitalist-reading-list-to-seize-the-means-of-production
Aral Balkan
Decentralisation is a post-capitalist concept. Capitalism cannot tolerate true decentralisation (although it will happily sell you the illusion of decentralisation) because true decentralisation cuts out the middleman. And capitalism is the religion of the middleman.
Aral Balkan
Wow, just had a proper look at OARS (Open Age Ratings Service) used in GNOME Software, elementary OS AppCenter, etc., and it’s problematic as hell. Thank goodness they removed “homosexuality” from the rating (wtf?) but it still represents a very limited world-view. e.g. “nudity likely to cause offense” To whom, exactly? “Intense: Explicit nudity showing nipples…” Men, put your shirts back on! Under language: profanity (“defined as blasphemous…language”) Not a secular rating, then…
Aral Balkan
Free and open source developers use commonplace technologies with low barriers of entry challenge 2021.
Aral Balkan
Yes, I’m looking at you stalled web project written in Elixir. Bloody Elixir, ffs! *sigh* What, was Guile unavailable? *smh*
Aral Balkan
Apple is slowly boiling frogs on client-side scanning. They got a backlash when they announced everything they were planning all at once so now they’re drip feeding it, hoping you won’t notice.
Aral Balkan
“Vote with your dollar” is the greatest lie ever told to Americans (a close second is the misguided belief that a bunch of pale-skinned basement-dwelling neckbeards can take on the US military with automatic rifles).
Aral Balkan
Think you can “vote with your dollar” against trillion-dollar corporations and billionaires? Stop and think for a second who has more dollars and thus more votes in such a system. |
@aral When anybody says "vote with your wallet" in response to a systemic social issue, I already know this cause is doomed.