Strypey @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

Under marked otherwise, all posts from this account are #CC #BYSA 4.0. Unless I send a DM, I want all my posts publicly visible, to any web browser, and any other user app or archival/ research system that speaks #ActivityPub (and ideally #Diaspora and #Zot too). I'm happy for them to be indexed by any search system and included in any relevant search. That's why I publish them on the web with Mastodon. When I want to have private discussion, I use DMs. One day the AP-verse will do this better.

"Our collective objective should be, to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence, or the disadvantage of anyone."
- Buckminster Fuller

BTW this dark period in China's recent history was not, as historically ignorant anticommunists tend to imply, the actual communist revolution. That began before WW2 and ended not long after the Red Army defeated the invading Japanese, while the Cultural Revolution began almost 2 decades later, in 1966. It seems, in hindsight, that in his declining years, Mao created a monster, a revolutionist cult that even he couldn't control, although it pretty much fizzled out after his death in 1976.

Can we, as netizens, learn from the bitter experience of the Cultural Revolution, and shift from mass denunciation to cooperative problem-solving?
Have we all been mistakenly using the net - and social media in particular - as the exercise ground for never-ending struggle sessions? I've always tried to explain why I disagree with people, while implicitly upholding their right to hold and express their ideas. But I'm sure there are plenty of times when I've failed at that.

#CulturalRevolution

The Three-Body Problem, by Chinese scifi novelist Cixin Liu, opens with a scene depicting a "struggle session" from the Cultural Revolution. His vivid writing personalizes the experiences I've seen in overview in historical documentaries, and read and heard about at the Rewi Alley memorial in Springfield.

The fact that this wrong-headed rant was warmly recommended by Mike Masnick seriously erodes my respect for TechDirt:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200928/11452045401/social-dilemma-manipulates-you-with-misinformation-as-it-tries-to-warn-you-manipulation-misinformation.shtml

#MikeMasnick #TechDirt

Garcia-Martinez wiggles, denies, misrepresents, strawmans, and focuses on trivia. He dismisses datafarm critics as luddite outsiders who don't understand tech, a talking point the film-makers anticipated by mostly interviewing former (and current) datafarmers. He compares their comments to Cultural Revolution "struggle sessions" (?!?), and claims they're just cynically monetizing their insider status while living in luxury. Which ironically, is exactly what he does:
https://antoniogarciamartinez.com/

The datafarm PR offensive against The Social Dilemma is well underway. Here's an example, written by Antonio Garcia-Martinez:

https://pullrequest.substack.com/people/410307-antonio-garcia-martinez

@sir throws out the baby with the bathwater:

"Anyone who tells you anything positive about anything which is even remotely connected to cryptocurrency almost certainly has ulterior motives and you should steer clear."

https://drewdevault.com/2020/09/20/The-potential-of-federation.html

Just because the vast majority of blockchain projects are VC-bait, doesn't mean the technology has no valid uses.

"Cryptocurrency is ... a massive waste of electricity and developer effort."

40 years ago, people were saying that about PCs in general ;)

Every wondered how to say "free Software" (free-as-in-speech) in Mandarin Chinese?

自由軟體 (zih-yo ruan-ti)

More translations here:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-translations.html

#FreeSoftware #Chinese #Mandarin #China #translation

I finally finished porting my page on Slack replacements to the P2PF wiki and updating it for 2020 remote workers desperate to liberate themselves:
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Slack_Alternatives

#Slack #P2PF

"What’s become clear from my years of using Slack at work is that it is, first and foremost, a tool of corporate surveillance. Slack stands for “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge,” after all. Its positive use depends on how much you trust your employer not to read your messages, because yes, they have complete access."

- #MonicaTorres, 2019

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/slack-is-bad-for-privacy_l_5d0bdc05e4b0aa375f49aa23

#Slack #SurveillanceCapitalism

After watching the opening song (😄), I moved on to the opening keynote. It's a panel discussion between some of the people involved in the drafting of the ActivityPub spec, which includes a good intro to the recent history of federated social network development:

https://conf.tube/videos/watch/6289920f-4e35-4141-ab6f-379b357849ec

To a certain extent the general dynamics laid out in this summary of the report apply to other rural cooperatives in Aotearoa as well, such as the fertilizer co-ops who sell their fluoride-laden wastes to local bodies to add to drinking water supplies.

#farming #cooperatives

This report is US focused, but *cough* Fonterra *cough*:
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/new-report-farmer-co-ops-among-predatory-monopolies-that-caused-coronavirus-food-crisis

#Fonterra #NZ

ActivityPubConf 2020 talks are now on PeerTube, so they can be watched in anticipation of the interactive sessions during the conference itself:
https://conf.tube/video-channels/apconf_channel/videos

#ActivityPubConf2020 #ActivityPub #PeerTube #ConfTube

Maybe also guides for installing apps, choosing hosts, and creating accounts on replacement services.

In the wake of the huge response to The Social Dilemma, I feel like the time has come to really push forward on Fyre Exyt, a project to create a detailed guide to escaping the datafarms.

I envisioned a page for each datafarm, to describe:

* what data users can export and how
* how to delete your account
* what liberating software / services could be the best replacement for various use cases of the datafarm

It's a big project. Anyone keen to help?

#Disintermedia #FyreExyt

Rethinking academic publishing for the digital age means publishing *more* data, but *less* peer-reviewed papers, so scholarly effort can be focused on writing (and reading) fewer, higher quality papers:

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/aug/05/why-we-should-publish-less-scientific-research

Hey devs working on matrix apps, if your app doesn't support encryption and device cross-signing (yet), you might as well only show unencrypted rooms in your UI (or grey out the encrypted ones). Obviously the app would need to offer a prominent explanation during setup for why that's going to happen, and maybe a note somewhere in the UI too, in case users get confused. Filling the UI with unreadable rooms is a poor #UX I've seen all too often.

#matrix #E2EE #encryption

"Your" taxes don't pay for anything. Taxation is a way that governments can reduce their country's money supply to prevent inflation, especially during times they need to spend a lot of money into existence for the public good. Cutting public spending so you can cut taxes, is like cutting water drinking so you can avoid going for a pee. If you cut either too much, the system gets unhealthy.

#MMT