 Server governance—moderation, server leadership, all that messy political (de)federation stuff—defines a whole lot of each member's experience of the fediverse. But for newcomers and fedi-curious especially, it's so opaque. I want to address that head-on. What if I decided to amass a book collection consisting only of posthumously published cash-in books from the estates of otherwise excellent authors?
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@darius May I suggest you start with "Dune: The Cash Crusade" or one of the others in the series?  My Twitter account is currently locked and I don't look at it, but I'm hard deleting it this month. If you have a Twitter account you don't read, I also recommend full deletion before Nov. 15. Here's why. Twitter has their TOS now in an unusual state https://x.com/en/tos with two copies of the TOS printed one after the other, with a notice the new TOS goes active November 15. The major difference I see is starting Nov 15 they give themselves explicit rights to train AI models on your posts. THREAD: My visual investigation of a drone massacre of 30+ people in Ethiopia is the cover story for today's @thecontinent digital paper. In this thread, I'll outline how we determined the precise location of a drone strike that happened in a war torn area cut off from the outside world. The illustration by the amazing Wynona Mutisi (yay for commissioning artists, nay for soulless AI!) depicts the final moments as described by survivors, who were riding aboard an Isuzu truck when it was hit. As I explained yesterday, documenting atrocities in Ethiopia's war in Amhara is extremely complex, because journalists are banned from any sort of critical reporting, and the war torn areas where atrocities take place are often cut off from the outside world, with the government cutting off communications to conceal its abuses. As such, news of this specific atrocity, which took place in February 2024, took a few days to emerge. https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/113290316616549004  @ZekuZelalem @ZekuZelalem @thecontinent Thanks for sharing this important but difficult work with us.  And, Christ On A Bike, going to press to announce the important developments in your shiny new security protocol, with "Security Considerations: TODO Security" _right there in the text of the spec_ does not fill me with confidence that you are taking this seriously. I’m taking some time offline, belatedly celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and still basking in the afterglow of the final XOXO, but I wrote a bit about releasing the XOXO talks last week, my approach to booking speakers, and the themes that emerged in our final year. https://waxy.org/2024/10/the-xoxo-2024-talks/  The first four minutes of @cabel's talk were kind of a sweet, cheerful revisiting and update of ideas from his previous talk and a check-in on Panic, which is great—and then the McDonald's mural arrived and everything took a TURN I don't think I've ever needed to do a "no spoilers!!" warning before about a talk, but if you can go into this cold, do  The only other thing I will say is that I have *never* experienced the kind of crowd reaction this got, anywhere, ever.    ED YONG'S XOXO TALK IS UP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddy5uMdzZB8 One of the all-time best humans doing the all-time best pandemic-related talk I have ever seen. (There are even some great birds.)  Federation of Foundations for Small Projects 💡 A multinational network of nonprofits and co-ops that provide a legal home for projects, pairing a flexible but standardized set of governance with a flexible but standardized set of services. Could be a project's forever home, or 'just' a way point between, say, Open Collective and landing at a mature and more specific Foundation. If I didn't need a ~salaried job, this is what I'd be trying to build right now. Nonprofits and co-ops because I think having investors who expect an ROI in the mix is a nonstarter. Federated because single points of failure and monocultures are dead ends. Standardized (but flexible) because that can make governance coherent, legible, and trustworthy for downstream users, while also simplifying offerings for project leaders and maintainers who are trying to find a home that fits their project's needs. @josh Well, one way to do that while still doing the job would be to do it with others.  @josh Are you aware of https://commonsconservancy.org/ ? Michiel Leenars and the team at Commons Conservancy have built a model that could easily be extended worldwide. All of the legal documents are themselves Open and reusable. Because, it turns out, even EXPLAINING THE PROBLEM to non-fedi people gets very complicated very quickly. I rewrote a more technical post five (5) times in the past couple of months and then tossed it and wrote the one above instead, because I always do better when I go back to human terms. There's a lot more coming, including more technical stuff and deeper looks at why I think governance should be the crucial factor in server choice. Hi. In the spirit of XOXO and the past couple of years of preliminary work and the things that need fixing, I'm starting a micro-studio and kicking off a community support setup and fixing what I can reach in the only way I know how.  🤖 Tracking strings detected and removed!
🔗 Clean URL(s): https://youtu.be/NJtTsBZ1tcc ❌ Removed parts: ?si=6ff-LydOFDevUVdM new blog post: a few thoughts on Memoriapolis (now in Early Access) https://blog.dante.cool/a-few-thoughts-on-memoriapolis-now-in-early-access/ I've been playing a bit of hot new early access citybuilder MEMORIAPOLIS. here are my thoughts on it (they're positive!) (mostly!) Returning to the XOXO stage ten years after his satirical “How I Won the Lottery” talk, @darius reflects on the compromises that come with being “indie” and the toxic systems that coerce us into betraying our values. https://xoxofest.com/2024/videos/darius-kazemi does anyone know if there is a story behind something.com? i remember finding it when i was in middle school and every now and then i check up on it and i'm impressed with how it has never changed edit: Yeah, found out, it's charmingly mundane https://mastodon.social/@dbelson/113250584803669035 |
Gregory's Server
You can also just skip all the fediverse stuff and follow the links to the Aquarius undersea research lab at the bottom. It's incredibly great!