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

A situation where users have time to react would also benefit from the normalization of OS and user data residing on a hardware key (eg a USB stick or sdCard), which could be removed from the device and concealed in an emergency. Even better if the device has a dummy OS that boots up without the key.

"Because providers of finance expect to receive a lot more than they contribute – a ‘return’ on their ‘investment’ – users of finance end up with somewhat less.

More and more people ... are returning to traditional money-pooling practices. Making their money available interest-free to others gives them access to interest-free money in turn."

Living Economies Educational Trust, 'The Common-Sense Finance of Savings Pools'

#finance #SavingsPools #LivingEconomies

#TIL there is a matrix <> Mastodon bridging bot written in Java:
https://matrix.org/bridges/#mastodon

Has anyone experienced this, as an end user on either end of the bridge, or as a server admin connecting it? Is it getting much use? Does anyone know which protocol(s) are used by the bot to operate the bridge?

#fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub #matrix #interoperation #bot #Java

"Ripple is a “panic button” that can send it’s trigger message to any app that is a “panic responder”. Such apps can do things like lock, disguise themselves, delete private data, send an emergency message, and more. It is meant for situations where there is time to react, but where users need to be sure it is not mistakenly set off."

https://guardianproject.info/apps/info.guardianproject.ripple/

#Ripple #PanicButton #PanicResponder

"#Checkey is a utility for getting information about the APKs that are installed on your device. Starting with a list of all of the apps that you have installed on your device, it will show you the #APK signature with a single touch, and provides links to virustotal.com and androidobservatory.org to easily access the profiles of that APK. It will also let you export the signing certificate and generate ApkSignaturePin pin files for use with the #TrustedIntents library."

https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/checkey

"Every pollster got it wrong. And there’s a reason. They weren’t paying attention to the various structural forces that made their sample flawed, the various reasons why a disgusted nation wasn’t going to contribute useful information to inform a media spectacle. This abuse of data has to stop. We need data to be responsible, not entertainment."

- #DanahBoyd, 2016

https://points.datasociety.net/reality

#polls #data

"The media is supposed to be a check to power, but, for years now, it has basked in becoming power in its own right. What worries me right now is that, as it continues to report out the spectacle, it has no structure for self-reflection, for understanding its weaknesses, its potential for manipulation."

- #DanahBoyd, 2016

https://points.datasociety.net/reality-check-de447f2131a3

#NewsMedia #FifthEstate

"At 35, Audrey Tang (唐宗漢) was appointed as Taiwan’s digital minister, a role that she also occupied as the country’s first transgender and non-binary member of government. More recently, Tang has been behind Taiwan’s technology-driven COVID-19 response, which helped the country keep its case counts under 1,000 as they soared across the world."

- #EmmaCockerell, 2021

https://china.usc.edu/audrey-tang-taiwans-digital-minister-harnessing-technology-social-good

#AudreyTang #Taiwan #COVID19

"This is an HTML email, please update your email client to view."

No! Please update your email generation system to send plain text email. Putting aside the risks of opening HTML in email apps, where browser security isn't protecting users from the most common HTML-based attacks, HTML email is the digital equivalent of packaging products in 3 layers of plastic when 1 layer of cardboard would do. It's a waste of bandwidth and energy.

#TimeBanksUSA #HTMLMail

This is a call to any kiwi on the fediverse (ie anyone currently resident in Aotearoa). Anyone got a used Android device compatible with LineageOS that you'd be willing to sell (or give away to a good home ;)?

#Aotearoa #NZ #kiwi #MobileDevices #LineageOS

Listening to the Yield album on The Grunge podcast, it slowly dawns on me that Pearl Jam are the US answer to U2.

#podcast #TheGrunge #PearlJam #U2

#ShowerThoughts It just occurred to me that brick phones are actually dumb calculators. I wonder if there would be a niche market for an old school scientific calculator
with a speaker and microphone added, and a slot for SIM cards. Powered by a little built-in solar panel.

#CellPhones #ScientificCalculators #SIM #SolarPower #RenewableTech

#TIL about hypothes.is, a site intended to offer a scholarly meta-moderation layer on top of web discussions. According to the Wikipedia article they publish their software as free code. I wonder if there could be some benefits in an integration with the fediverse?

https://web.hypothes.is/

#hypothesis #MetaModeration #fediverse

"Facebook sits down with someone and says, ‘We could steal the functionality and bring it into the mothership, or you could sell to us at this distressed price.’”

- antitrust expert #HalSinger, 2018

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/4/17816572/tim-wu-facebook-regulation-interview-curse-of-bigness-antitrust

#antitrust #FaceBook

#TIL that Stack Overflow do regular dumps of their Q&A data under a CC license:

https://stackoverflow.blog/cc-wiki-dump/

#StackOverflow #CreativeCommons #CC #OpenData

Some intriguing advice here from #JeffAtwood, back in 2007, on doing web ads that don't suck for the user, eg:

"3. Reward frequent readers by keeping your new content free of ads. Use time-delayed ads that only display on articles after they've aged for a week.

4. Always offer full content in your RSS feed [and maybe ActivityPub feed?]. Don't force people to click through to your site and see your advertisements."

https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-advertise-on-your-blog-without-completely-selling-out/

#WebAds #RevenueModels #advertising #RSS

"Developers think cloning a site like StackOverflow is easy for the same reason that open-source software remains such a horrible pain in the ass to use ... There is a tremendous amount of spit and polish that goes into making a major website highly usable. A developer, asked how hard something will be to clone, simply does not think about the polish, because the polish is incidental to the implementation."

- #BenjaminPollack, 2009

https://www.bitquabit.com/post/one-which-i-call-out-hacker-news/

#StackOverflow #OpenSource #UX