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

What an industry insider was saying about "open source" almost 20 years ago:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/unix-pioneer-doubts-about-open-source/

A keen self-hoster writes about the new voice/ video calling features in Conversations:
https://blog.wirelessmoves.com/2020/05/xmpp-voice-and-video-calls-with-conversations-a-dream-come-true.html

#jabber #Conversations #VOICE

The #WhatSapp overlords are intentionally crippling its ability to spread any message that gets too popular:

"WhatsApp announced on Tuesday that it will restrict forwarding of highly forwarded messages, so users can only send them to one chat at a time. The idea is to make it much more difficult and tedious to bulk-forward a message. WhatsApp ... has been particularly focused on curbing the spread of misinformation in recent months, given the Covid-19 pandemic."
https://www.wired.com/story/signal-earn-it-ransomware-security-news/

Yet another decentralized GH replacement, using Git over the P2P SAFE network:
http://dweb.happybeing.com/blog/post/002-safegit-decentralised-git-on-safe-network/

#Git #SAFE #P2P

A thought provoking article about moderating online discussion platforms, and the reasonable limits of free speech within organizational decision-making, put together by the Italian Pirate Party:
https://structure.pages.de/convivenza.en

#moderation #FreeSpeech #PirateParty #Italy

Remember #EatLocal, the #NZ Uber-Eats-killer Nigel Latta was promoting? They made the mistake of depending on an Oz company (Mr Yum) for their online platform and have been screwed. Does anyone know of any local companies in Aotearoa who develop and/or host software that Eat Local could use in place of the Mr Yum platform? https://thespinoff.co.nz/food/06-06-2020/what-went-wrong-with-eat-local-nz/

#NigelLatta #UberEats #MrYum

"... this [Edge installation] came as part of a forced Windows update, which Microsoft has already had a damn hard time justifying without invading people’s desktops as well. It’s going to be harder to buy the argument that forced updates are necessary for security when they’re pulling double-duty as an intrusive marketing tool."

- SeanHollister, 2020-07-02

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-forced-update-chromium-editorial

#Microsoft #Windows #Edge

#JitsiMeet is making progress on adding E2EE to conferences:
https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/

FYI @sunquan @mike_hales Vosk can recognize speech in Chinese. I presume they mean Mandarin, but ...

"We have recently released open source speech recognition library #Vosk 9 for Android ... It doesn’t require internet connection and Google services ... Supports 9 languages - English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese. More to come."

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/vosk-speech-recognition-library/9793

#Android

"In a professional context, pixel-tracking is a fairly benign tool; it can be used for content marketing, lead generation, or reëngagement. But it takes on a different sheen when it’s deployed for personal use ... it’s still not obvious why productive people should want to track their correspondents the way marketers do."

- #AnnaWiener

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/what-the-superhuman-controversy-reveals-about-the-shifting-ethics-of-software

Here are the the sock puppets mouth these talking points, but I've subbed in burglery for Superhuman's stalking by email:

* this criticism of burglers is excessive

* lock-picking tech is not new

* everyone is doing burglery tools now

* burglers are just doing their job, it's on users to put more locks on their doors

* anyone who agrees with this criticism of burglery is naive and ignorant about security tech

It's the Silicon Valley narcissism I pointed out in the quotes about HN.

Superhuman, an elite venture capitalist funded startup, are getting publicly schooled on business ethics by a concerned and well-informed industry peer. Enter the PR sock puppets. "Thomas Jones" starts with a solo of the talking points, then "PatrickM", "Scott", and John, join in for the chorus.

#ShowerThoughts every time you start to read the comments on a blog post or video, imagine you just finished listening to a conference talk, and the comments are being delivered verbally from the audience. Remember you can leave the room and get a cuppa as soon as the Q&A session stops adding something worthwhile to the talk.

"Don’t use Superhuman yourself. As mentioned earlier, Superhuman leaves you unprotected from spying because they don’t allow you to block these spyware pixels. It also turns you into an unwitting information collection machine, aggregating info on every single person you send email to. Possibly including your parents, children, partners, and friends."

FYI this is also what being used by Farcebook turns you into. You don't have to do that either.

I strongly suggest turning off HTML mail completely. You don't really need anything it does, It's a massive waste of resources, and it exposes you to all manner of dodgy shite. The targeted surveillance #Superhuman does is just the tip of the iceberg.

"Superhuman doesn’t even let its own customers turn images off. So merely by using Superhuman, you are vulnerable to the exact same spying that Superhuman enables you to do to others. He is right about one thing though: because of spyware-foisting companies like Superhuman, you should unfortunately turn off all image loading in your email client."
https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/06/superhuman-is-spying-on-you

True, running online services has material and energy costs well above zero. But let's just focus on air conditioning. A Chinese university burns through massive amounts of energy heating campus buildings in the winter, and cooling and dehumidifying them to tolerable level in the summer. Then both teachers and students go home and heat or cool their apartments from scratch, which they wouldn't need to if they worked there all day. That's assuming they don't have a partner at home all day too.

Does it use cost the same amount of resources and energy to build and run an bricks-and-mortar university, as it does to build and run a virtual one? There's simply no way it could.