Strypey (AFK until end of Feb) @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

I will be offline until the end of February, 2019. Until then, there will be no new blog posts, and I will not be answering any email, or interacting on any other platforms like the fediverse or Loomio. Basically, the plan is to unplug the router, and not plug in back in until I’m ready to go back online. The most important reason for this is just to give myself a break from the net, and spend some time doing other things like going for walks and reading books. More here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2019/01/22/out-of-office-for-headspace-and-writing-retreat/

A more personal #introduction. I enjoy #SciFi and #comedy. I've done some writing of both short stories and comedy skits, and keen to share more creative work along these lines, under #CreativeCommons licenses. I'm a keen performer, from #Shakespeare to #improv to #juggling to playing music, and keen to get back into these activities too. I'm passionate about #permaculture, the #Transition movement, and other forms of ethical and ecological design. I'm also vegan (been post-meat since mid-90s).

#Introduction career activist and professional volunteer from Aotearoa (NZ). Co-founder of numerous community projects, including a community newspaper, #CoWorking space, #MicroRadio station, #SocialCentre, the Aotearoa sections of #Indymedia and #CreativeCommons, and the Aotearoa Permaculture Network. These days, I publish long-form blogs at #Disintermedia. I'd love to hear from you about common interests, my contact info and more about my project history is here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/danyl-strype

I will be offline until the end of February, 2019. Until then, there will be no new blog posts, and I will not be answering any email, or interacting on any other platforms like the fediverse or Loomio. Basically, the plan is to unplug the router, and not plug in back in until I’m ready to go back online. The most important reason for this is just to give myself a break from the net, and spend some time doing other things like going for walks and reading books. More here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2019/01/22/out-of-office-for-headspace-and-writing-retreat/

Uncomfortable as I am with military metaphors (which are all too common in activist circles), things like gOogleDocs are not the 'tools of the enemy', but their weapons. Choosing to use them is more like shooting ourselves with the guns of the enemy, than it is like using their tools. Their tools of the enemy are all the things we *don't* have access to, like the source code of the goOgle search algorithms, or the user data they use to train their machine translation algorithms.

Hey fediverse admins, have you made sure your instance is being counted by https://the-federation.info/ ? I love being able to respond with that stats site URL when people say "nobody uses federated social networks" elsewhere on the web :) It now counts nodes running any one of 36 server apps, across 9 federation protocols, including #OStatus, and #ActivityPub, reporting about 2 1/2 million users.

Also, GH use "MIT" for everything and died as an independent company, while these aforementioned companies who use #copyleft licenses are still afloat. Take note.

It just occurred to me that #GitHub ran out of money and had to sell themselves to MS. While companies like #Loomio, whose code is 100% free under #AGPL, and #Wire (A/GPL), are still in business. Doesn't that prove that the infamous "#OpenSource almost everything" creed of the GH founders is a failure, and you might as well free all your code? (looking at you #GitLab)
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html

#TIL that while #OpenMoko Inc. might be dead, OpenMoko continues as an "open phone" project, with a volunteer community:
https://openmoko.org/

Weird that GH sold #Gitter, a mature codebase they'd kept proprietary, and which already had a significant user base, and then bought a much newer, #FreeCode chat platform like Spectrum, which is only just out of beta. What can we read between the lines here about the MS for GH going forward?

#Spectrum.chat has been acquired by MS via GH:
https://spectrum.chat/spectrum/general/spectrum-is-joining-github~1d3eb8ee-4c99-46c0-8daf-ca35a96be6ce

"Spectrum will stay open source, and we’ll continue collaborating with the open source community to serve you the best way we can."

I hope so, but given that GH keeps a bunch of their secret sauce proprietary, I'm not going to hold my breath. One less #SlackaLike to recommend ;)

#WTF #WordPress! Requiring free code developers to use #Slack to contribute to your code, and making end users use #IRC for support? You've got this exactly backwards:
https://make.wordpress.org/chat/

'Forking' the #fediverse article from #Wikipedia onto another #MediaWiki instance (#P2PF) results in a mess full of redlinks, and a broken table, whether I copy from the view page, or the edit page. There's got to be an easier way to do this! Some way of combining some of the portability concepts of the #SmallestFederatedWiki into MediaWiki?

#Lubuntu are switching from the discontinued #LXDE desktop to its replacement, #LXQT, from 18.10 onwards:
https://betanews.com/2018/07/30/ubuntu-linux-lubuntu-old-lxqt/

They have also announced they are dropping support for 32-bit PCs from 19.04 onwards:
https://betanews.com/2018/12/21/lubuntu-linux-32bit/

So 18.04 LTS is the last version of Lubuntu that can be recommended for use with older PCs. #Trisquel 9 will be based off 18.04 LTS, and I presume #Mate will remain the default desktop. Trisquel 8 is what I run (for now) on an ancient 32-bit Acer netbook

Obviously to work, it would have to be a bit sneaky. So to avoid suspicion of being actually exploitative (instead of simulating it for educational purposes), the project could work with user rights groups like the #FSF and #EFF behind the scenes, and allow both its code and servers to be audited by people from those orgs before going live.

I'm envisioning a user education project that masquerades as a new #SiliconValley startup, with a website and mobile apps. It would implement every design #antipattern used by typical startups, like asking for access to contact lists on other services to help users "find your friends", asking for every permission available on a mobile during install etc. But instead of exploiting these, it would email the user, explaining all the ways the information they gave could have been used to do so.

"Fighting oppression is far more serious than professional work ..." - Richard Stallman
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.en.html

Everyone working directly on Collaborate is a volunteer, but "there are just a few ... base costs that you can't pay for with volunteering, things like accounting software"
#WTF? Why are charities paying for accounting software? On what planet does it make any sort of sense for a volunteer-run charity to be cross-subsidizing the expenses and profits of proprietary #SaaSS accounting platforms?!?

Would it be possible to fund a scientific survey on how many people would buy a 100% free-as-in-freedom computer (desktop, mobile, TV, e-reader etc) if it was a ) available in a local shop, b) everything just worked out-of-the-box, and c) the #UX was not only as good, but better, than a proprietary OS? With solid numbers on demand, it might be easier to convince hardware companies to sell #RespectsYourFreedom compatible components. #FSF? #FSFE? #SFLC? #SFC? #OSI #EFF?

Yet another reason that #GNOME is only useful to a limited number of users with newer / more powerful PCs is it's dependence on #GTK:
"GTK requires hardware acceleration for animations"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/a-tour-of-elementary-os-perhaps-the-linux-worlds-best-hope-for-the-mainstream/

... which means if your device doesn't do hardware acceleration for graphics, or #Linux drivers don't support it on your device, GNOME is going to use huge chunks of your system resources on animations. Unless you turn them off, in which case why not use a lighter DE in the first place?

* if Collaborate themselves, are going to be funded via donations, grants, or fees paid by funded charities listing volunteer opportunities on their platform, it's not even a business, it's a charity. Why not liberate the code, encourage large community groups to set up their own instance (using their own branding not Collaborate's), and federate selectively with instances they trust?

* they are kind of reinventing the wheel, since there are already #TimeBanks all across the country running digital platforms to facilitate volunteering (in the form of "time trades"). Why build a new website, especially a proprietary one?
* Instead of taking steps to make sure they are in control of their technology, #Collaborate have outsourced it to a third-party. Who owns the code? What steps have they taken to make sure they can keep using it if Springload shuts down?
#Collaborate