Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al)

Fediverse server admins: have you considered putting a limit on the number of people that can join your instance?

If not, please do.

(This should really be a feature in fediverse servers like Mastodon, etc. “Max occupancy” or something with an auto-shutoff when it’s reached.)

Remember, small is beautiful ;)

If nothing else, I’m sure none of you want to become mini Zuckerbergs or Musks – eww – so let’s make sure we set the right incentives from the start.

#fediverse #scale #smallness

Well, that’s that, then.

#twitter

If you don’t want to become that which you despise, you must design your systems accordingly.

Multi-user federated servers are inherently open to economies of scale and thus to embrace, extend & extinguish.

Fediverse servers should be designed _so they cannot scale beyond a certain size_ to ensure no node becomes a centre.

If your aim is to devolve wealth/power/control, vertical scale is your failure mode. If you want to raise mini Zuckerbergs, by all means, scale on…

#fediverse #smallTech

A privacy conference sponsored by Google and Meta is like a healthcare conference sponsored by Phillip Morris or a climate change conference sponsored by ExxonMobil. In other words, it is bullshit.

https://www.cpdpconferences.org/sponsors-and-partners/platinum-sponsors

#cpdp2022 #privacy #tech #humanRights #institutionalCorruption #privacyWashing

Love this: I’m editing my slides for tomorrow’s talk at PrivacyWeek using slides.com on my elementary OS daily driver and getting an almost real-time preview in the Atem Mini Pro multiview from my Pop!_OS laptop that’s playing the presentation.

#pw21

@feditips And don’t forget, you can install Owncast on your own VPS in seconds using Site.js ;)

https://owncast.online/quickstart/sitejs/

#SmallTech #SmallWeb #owncast #twitch #alternatives

To fine a trillion-dollar company in the “millions of dollars” is to legitimise their business model.

Irish police will have the power to compel people to provide passwords for electronic devices when carrying out a search warrant under new legislation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57468750

This is a fundamental attack on basic human rights.

#Ireland #HumanRights #EU

¡Limpiemos la web!

Desarrolladores, es hora de elejir un bando: ¿Ayudarás a deshacernos del rastreo que invade nuestra privacidad en la web, o serás complice?

🚮️ https://cleanuptheweb.org/es/

#CleanUpTheWeb #FlocOffGoogle

So, ball’s in your court, web server developers.

Are you going to add a one-line header, by default, to your server responses to protect people from being tracked by Google or not?

Adding it to Site.js took 5 minutes or work:

https://github.com/small-tech/site.js/commit/5c3c70b8ec29165ac9504be4d114b4b2a95ec05c#diff-e727e4bdf3657fd1d798edcd6b099d6e092f8573cba266154583a746bba0f346

Do you care?

More: https://plausible.io/blog/google-floc

I can guarantee this is the best impromptu rant against Microsoft and their disdain for your privacy that you will watch today (from yesterday’s S’update):

https://vimeo.com/523923643#t=10m47s

#microsoft #windows #privacy

If you enjoyed Fascism 1.0, boy are you going to love Fascism 2.0! Now with all the innovative new features brought to you by surveillance capitalism.

Running git 2.28 or later? Take 10 seconds and enter the following into your terminal to set the default branch in new projects to main not master:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Actions matter more than words. So here’s a simple action you can take to show that you care.

The only “ethical AI” for personal data is free and open AI that runs on your own devices where you own and control it. The only “ethical AI” for communal data is free and open AI owned and controlled by us all. AI/data owned and controlled by corporations is unethical to begin with.

Don’t ask me if I’ve watched The Social Dilemma if you haven’t read The Prodigal Tech Bro.

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

“Defaults don’t matter, you can just change them.”

Really? Why do you think Google gives Mozilla HALF A BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR to be the DEFAULT search engine on Firefox if defaults don’t matter? Or give Apple £1.2 BILLION for the same in the UK alone?

Think about it.

Are they idiots?

Or are you?

Starting tomorrow Laura and I will hold six mentorship sessions each at the European Partnership Civil Society Facility Online Hackathon.

Here’s hoping we can steer some of them away from surveillance capitalism and towards Small Tech.

https://ict.eapcivilsociety.eu/en

If you’re a developer, you care about accessibility, and you’re looking for something to work on, consider helping out with Jitsi.

Reasons we can’t use it for EU events:

- No support for simultaneous translation
- No support for sign language interpretation
- Other #a11y issues

https://jitsi.org/

I’ll never get tired of just typing

site --sync-to=ar.al

to deploy my site with Site.js (https://sitejs.org).

Also, if I type

site --sync-to=ar.al --live-sync

instead, it syncs my changes on every save. Someone say “live blog?”

Hey Apple,

Saying you block trackers but not blocking Google Analytics is like saying you practice safe sex when you cut off the heads of your condoms.

Sincerely,A guy who makes an app that actually blocks trackers