p.p.s. Google announced today that they are shutting down their link shortener service goo.gl. From 2025, goo.gl shortened links will no longer work:

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/

This is why link shorteners cause link rot, because eventually link shortener services close down, even ones run by megacorporations, and all their links break.

Your link will survive a lot longer if you avoid using shorteners. You don't need shorteners on Mastodon, all links count as 23 characters anyway.

#OpenStreetMap is asking for your help! Google is shutting down its link shortening service next year, and there are some OSM points of interest that require updating: https://maproulette.org/browse/challenges/48783

Here at MapRoulette, we are not huge fans of link shorteners, but we do run our own, mpr.lt, to provide OpenStreetMap with more concise changeset comments that still include a full backlink to the MapRoulette task. Costs less than $100/y to run. Want to chip in? Every $/€ helps! --> https://openstreetmap.app.neoncrm.com/forms/individual-donation

> For a vibrant consumer navigational ecosystem to emerge, society needs to invest in OpenStreetMap as a public good. … City planners should dedicate staffers to updating their roads and bridges on OpenStreetMap. Communities should submit updates with roads and hazards in their local areas

We quite agree! 😍

From @Julia's recent Op. Ed. in the #NewYorkTimes, “Your Driving App Is Leading You Astray”

📰 read here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/opinion/google-maps-driving-apps-flaws.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6E0.yGok.7gErcSBb7E43&smid=url-share
#OpenStreetMap #OSM #gischat #FreeMaps

Yup, it's true. Firefox 128 includes new adtech features that are turned on by default and announced with very little fanfare, so most people might not even know they're there. :blobcatverysad:

Well, this is me telling you they're there. You might want to go ahead and take a minute to opt out.

Here's the little helpful explainer from Mozilla about how it all works:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

My read seems to be: Mozilla says website surveillance is generally bad and should be defended against. Cool. No notes. Firefox actually has a lot of nice anti-tracking and privacy features there and that's the main reason why I like Firefox.

But, and I swear I'm not even joking a little bit here, Mozilla goes on to say that advertisers might be happier if Firefox itself just tracked you directly and sent activity reports back to them.

Doesn't that sound great?

Now, to Mozilla's credit, they claim to anonymize the activity reports. And you can still meaningfully opt out of the whole system.

But WTF, mate?! I use Firefox *because* it fights against adtech. Or at least it used to. Now, Mozilla just lets adtech right in the front door and hopes you won't notice? :blobcat_thisisfine:

Well, we noticed. Mozilla is damage and we need to route around it.

UPDATE: The about:config setting for this is `dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled`. It's a bool. Set it to false to turn it off.

Your attention please:

Maybe you've never heard about it but since 2020, the Next Generation Internet programs, a sub-branch of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe program, have been cascading funding (via @nlnet calls) open source software in Europe. The massive fundings have enabled a great deal of free software development in recent years, and all without too many constraints (with too few transparency and monitoring, though… which urgently needs to be improved). Unfortunately, these NGI programs seem to have been withdrawn from the next round of Horizon Europe fundings to give priority to AI bullshit.

As a result, we’ve been invited to contact the National Contact Points, Horizon Europe’s national representatives, to express our concern and the importance of maintaining public funding for free software. With this in mind, we wrote an open letter at Petites Singularités and thought it would make sense to fork it out with Hackstub and ARN in Strasbourg for the French NCP to get other French-speaking free software orgas to sign. I’m thinking in particular of the software that has benefited from this funding, such as Yunohost, but also of the Kittens that use this same software.

We can also announce that this topic will be part of the central theme of the next #OFFDEM in Brussels, on the first weekend of February 2025. There's not yet an exact title, but we’ll be discussing financing and community structuring for free software over the next few years.

If you want to sign the french-speaking version of this letter, there's a pad for it: https://pad.public.cat/lettre-NCP-NGI

#ngi #publicMoneyPublicCode #floss

One week left! On Thursday 18th July we'll start the OpenStreetMap Europe 2024 conference.
The time is short, but you may still get there, the tickets are available (concessions for active contributors at around 60 EUR), and the speakers are stellar! Reach us in case of any questions.

Schedule: https://cfp.openstreetmap.org.pl/state-of-the-map-europe-2024/schedule/
Tickets: https://tobilet.pl/state-of-the-map-europe-2024.html
Main website: https://stateofthemap.eu/

#SOTMEU2024
#StateoftheMapEurope
#OSM
#OpenStreetMap

1/3 @IvanSanchez at #FOSS4G: "something something Cyber Resilience Act (#CRA) something something"

plus some joking¹, criticism, etc.:

- legislation = program
- CRA: hey, we should do something reg. security of software and stuff
- CRA is quite short and simple, but …
- #FLOSS foundations took a look and … "what the heck?!"
- and programmers are taking things litterally¹
- current state seems to be "it's difficult" and thus also "maybe no big deal, but still risky"

¹ https://noc.social/@doublebyte/112728715113895030