Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 5

"But what you're really doing is engaging in a feedback loop of distrust, where you start to see other people as the problem and technology as the solution. Where 'don't be evil' really becomes don't be human."
- #DouglasRushkoff
https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/episodes/ep135-mary-gray

#CoryDoctorow from the same podcast:
"Mark Zuckerberg will tell you that there's no way to imagine a search engine or a social media tool that isn't spying on you and taking your information and trying to manipulate you, right? He'll tell you that some dude came off a mountain with two stone tablets saying 'stop rotating thine log files and start mining them for actionable market intelligence, right? That never happened."

#WhatTheDuck?

#NZ National party leader #SimonBridges seems to think cutting corporate tax rates puts more money in people's pockets. Whose pockets Simon?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/focusonpolitics/audio/2018711197/focus-on-politics-national-s-economic-plan

Projects like #DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and #Handle.net have created ways to permanently link to documents on the web, even if their actual URL changes. But like #Webcitation.org and #Archive.org, both are centralized systems, requiring layers of bureacracy and ongoing funding to maintain. #DataShards has been proposed as a way to automate this, in a decentralized and even offline way:
https://librelounge.org/episodes/26-announcing-datashards.html

Mysterious black boxes protected by "commercial sensitivity", and "intellectual property", and copious NDAs to find out even the basics of what's in the box, are often blatant scams. At best, they're most likely generic tech that someone is repackaging as a genius innovation, over-hyping, and over-charging for.

"We’re still on social media but assessing that decision – largely prompted by companies like Basecamp and Mozilla leaving.”
- #Banqer founder #KendallFlutey
https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/26-08-2019/the-crisis-in-capitalism-nz-ceos-on-the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-social-media/

Did I miss a major decampment from the #datafarms?

I've been saying for years that we could improve public interest media just by making it compulsory to release every piece of publicly-funded media under a #CreativeCommons license (ideally a #FreeCulture one). That way a lot less public media funding would be siphoned off to subsidize the production of commercially motivated garbage like "reality TV" (corporate-sponsored infomercials masquerading as "local content").

@up201705417 a great write up on the unholy clusterfudge that is online communication in 2019, with some good historical background that I remember living through. @librelounge did an episode on this too:
https://librelounge.org/episodes/episode-18-the-rise-and-fall-of-instant-messengers.html

"Support for the personal use cannabis referendum has plummeted"
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12258491

Really? The results show a fairly even split between "Yes" and "No" supporters, with at least a year to go until polling day. That's quite encouraging, considering that allowing a commercial market was always going to be a harder argument to win than just decriminalizing recreational use.
I'm confident that as we get the evidence before the public, a lot of "undecided" and "No" votes will turn to "Yes".

That said, I would support more government regulations of internet *corporations*, rather than the net itself (which is difficult if not impossible anyway).

"Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction to complaints about Facebook propaganda is to call for more government control over the internet. Appeasing governments in this way would, not coincidently, keep global markets open for Facebook, while strengthening the propaganda power of governments and preventing any more nasty outbreaks of democracy, such as the Arab Spring."
https://truthout.org/articles/weaponized-social-media-is-driving-the-explosion-of-fascism/

Bang on.

Hey #BountySource, have you heard of HTML? It's this great tool that allows you to display text, graphics, audio, and video in a web page (with some CSS for layout), without any need for #Javascript. Check it out!
#MakeJavascriptOptional

Also, this is an example of what can happen when we normalize the idea of blocking groups of people from otherwise neutral technical platforms for political reasons. Which is why I've been consistently arguing against #Tusky developers' decision to block a certain domain name in their #Mastodon app, despite sympathizing with their political motivations for doing so.

Remember when a bunch of us were lamenting the end of #GitHub as a (somewhat) neutral development platform for #FreeCode development, after it got bought by #McSoft, and lots of people were trying to tell us it was fine? Now they're enforcing racist trade sanctions on behalf of the US government:
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/locked-tech-company-comply-iran-sanctions-190731081829014.html

Now I'm not one to say I told you so, but it's even clearer now how important code forge federation projects like #ForgeFed and #SourceHut are.

I need to set up a website for a #comedy podcast I'm doing with an old friend and collaborator. I'm thinking of just using an off-the-shelf service like #Wordpress.com or #Squarespace, to keep it simple. But if there's a #cooperative doing something like this, using only #FreeCode software, at a similar price, I'd rather support them than lease a #VPS and spend hours doing my own sysadmin.

I'm increasingly feeling like #Disintermedia is being left behind. It might be time to fold it as an attempt at an independent entity. If I'm going to continue with it, even just as a blog, I need to think about either moving to a mobile-friendly host, or going into self-hosting.

Looks like the days of net platform corporations acting as de facto global governments may be coming to an end. Regulators in the EU, US, Canada, and other jurisdictions have taken various forms of action over the last few years to reign in FarceBook and Goggle, and now the Australian authorities are joining the party:
https://eveningreport.nz/2019/07/26/consumer-watchdog-calls-for-new-measures-to-combat-facebook-and-googles-digital-dominance-120077/

As a teenager, my favourite RH movie was not Blade Runner (although I did and do love that #SciFi classic), but Blind Fury. In which a blinded US soldier, who for no obvious reason has been trained in the dark fight by a mysterious Vietnamese swordsmaster, returns home and goes on a quest with a sword disguised as a cane. Hilarity ensues. Also swordplay. It's a must-watch.

The debate about apps blocking their users from using them with particular servers is really about #NetNeutrality. The principle here is that software makers and network operators don't make decisions for users about who and what to connect with. This principle is most important to those with the least social power. If domains can be blocked in one app for being "fascists", it sets a precedent for other apps to block domains for being anarchists, or blacks, or queers etc.