Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 2

#TIL about Ranking Digital Rights, a human rights watchdog group that ranks tech companies according to how well they respect their users' basis rights and freedoms:
https://rankingdigitalrights.org/about/

#DigitalRights are #HumanRights

@RyuKurisu One intriguing consequence of this could be a shift in revenue model for internet services, from huge datafarms, to smaller services (under 1M users) charging users as customers or members. It could also be a boon for federated networks. How many email, jabber, matrix, or fediverse instances have over 1M users? Of those who do, how quickly would they follow Fastmail's example and shed non-paying users if this became law?

@Gargron @lohang

A quick reminder that just after he founded Farcebook as "thefacebook", Mark Zuckerberg said its users were "dumb fucks". Why? Because they trusted him to protect their privacy:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/17/facebook-people-first-ever-mark-zuckerberg-harvard

#MarkZuckerberg

Anyone know of a free code front-end that can do to #Medium articles what Nitter does to Titter threads? ie strip all the surplus JS cruft out of the article page, load the comments, and display them at the same bottom of the article, without a bunch of extra clicks and JS.

As a user of liberating software, free culture works, or user-respecting online services, it's common to want to contribute back but not know how. One contribution anyone can make is to send a message to the maintainers telling them a few things you like about it, thanking them for their work. It's easy to remember to complain about bugs or missing features, but like everyone, creators need compliments too, especially when they are volunteers.

Followed a link to an earlier article where @enkiv2 shares this thought about a conference experience in 2008:

"... in the community at the intersection of tech and social justice, the political ramifications of fake news on social media was old news ten years ago."

I wonder if now is the time to approach Stuff and other news orgs and ask if they'd like their own fediverse instance, under their own domain?

NZ news site Stuff.co.nz has decided to stop publishing their news content on FarceBook:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018754217/midweek-mediawatch-ethical-conundrums

About time.

#Stuff #NewsMedia #SocialMedia

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

Anyone willing to help ccMixter with making HTTPS work across their whole site?
http://ccmixter.org/

#ccMixter #HTTPS

Oh goddammit. *facepalm* I really need to start checking the dates on blog posts before I start deconstructing them.

That said, people do make these kind of 'wasting RAM doesn't matter' arguments and appear to be serious, so it was still worth the braindump ;)

"... blockers will definitely not block advertisements that are completely integrated with the content that you wanted to open, but when that sort of thing happens, it means that the author of the content knew about what they were advertising, instead of just having a banner ad automatically stuck to their page. Figuring out if you can trust the author of the web page that you opened is something you had to do anyway."

Word.

It's about time we stopped buying into the propaganda phrase "ad blockers", and started calling user-protection tools like #uBlockOrigin and #NoScript what they are; spy blockers. If I display ads on my website using HTML and CSS, spy blockers won't block those. As far as they know, the text, images, audio, or video that make up the ads could be anything. So what's really being blocked is not ads, but tracking. Thanks to the authors of this site, for pointing this out:
https://shouldiblockads.com/

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the rise of "source available" licenses (both morality licenses and the no-commercial-use ones) herald the end of "open source". Not because the practices of code sharing and collaboration that has gone under that name will end. But because the only people who will stick with licenses that honour the Open Source Definition are those who come to understand that computing freedoms are the point, not shared source:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

#FreeCode

Apparently you have to be logged into a GH account to read a Gist now? Another sign of the MS rot setting in.

#Gist #GitHub

@syntacticsugarglider
IANAL but I'm pretty sure that I have no legal grounds for a copyright action unless;
a) I am the copyright holder, or
b) I have legal documents empowering me to act on behalf of the copyright holder

I'm guessing that copyright trolls are banking on most people not knowing that, and assuming that GPL gives anyone the right to enforce compliance (AFAIK it doesn't).

@liaizon

@jcbrand Fair :) I'm in the process of rebuilding Disintermedia, including my CV page, after the heat death of CoActivate. I will post a follow up to my job-beg post when that's done.

My wife and I are going through a bit of a rough time at the moment. We're privileged to be in a better position than a lot of people right now, but we're stuck indefinitely outside our country of residence (China) and surfing from couch to couch. Most of our money is in a Chinese bank account we can't access while outside China (looong story). If anyone can offer me some paid work I can do remotely from #Aotearoa (#NZ), that would really help.

If the only way you can help is a boost, cool :)

Please avoid using the propaganda phrase "rubber bullets" and try to use a phrase that more accurately describes these dangerous and sometimes lethal weapons:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/06/08/the-deadly-truth-behind-rubber-bullets/