Notices by Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net), page 6
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jan-2019 11:31:58 UTC 
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@aral
1. Fund entities whose sole purpose is profit
2. Claim you're doing "Tech for Good"
3. Implement dark patterns
4. Insert ads and trackers
5. "Innovate" the algorithmic timeline
6. Make public statements about privacy, then implement detailed telemetry system because you need to know all about user behavior
7. Set headquarters to be a shell company in a tax haven
8. Claim that diversity is important, but only recruit men with CS degrees from ivy league universities
9. Burn out of VC cash
10. Issue ICO
11. Be bought by Google or Facebook
12. Retire to a gated community -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 28-Dec-2018 23:57:24 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
There are many evangelists for open source but not that many for software freedom. We're now in a time where the software freedom issues are really becoming obvious to the average person although they may not be consciously aware of them and may just think that their software is always bad and trying to trick them in one way or another or is doing things they don't want or havn't consented to. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 16-Dec-2018 07:57:25 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Science can provide useful insights, but the practice of actually existing scientific institutions is fraught with politics and every type of irrationality you can imagine. Science only provides a method and the implementation of the method is usually flawed, and of course heavily distorted by capitalism and militarism. There are not many careers to be made out of trying to reproduce results, and so often shaky conclusions are believed as facts for a long time. It's similar to building software without bothering to look for or fix bugs.
It was Bronowski who said that science represents the best we can know despite our fallibility as humans. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 15-Dec-2018 13:19:57 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
bladerunner.jpg -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 15-Dec-2018 11:30:38 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Freedombone in 2019 https://blog.freedombone.net/freedombone-in-2019 -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 09-Dec-2018 19:24:51 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
To not just design for decentralization, but to actively resist centralizing tendencies.
To design for non-scalability. Good performance with small number of users. Bad with large.
To limit the reach of broadcasts within the network.
To design for small friend networks, not masses of followers. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 08-Dec-2018 19:13:55 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Even if it is opt-in, user profile directory popularity contests are not likely to have a good outcome.
Try not to design systems which foster personality cults. There's too much of that in the silos already. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 08-Dec-2018 11:17:44 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Matrix low bandwidth proof of concept https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOyKC-nf-KE
Or you could just use IRC. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 22:25:16 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@blakehaswell One factor to consider is that if the Australian law is considered to be "successful" then similar laws will be passed elsewhere.
Some possible tactics:
- Ensure that any backdoors which the government adds are discovered and publicized
- Work towards reproducible builds
- Encourage everyone not to trust proprietary chat apps. Assume that such apps are already backdoored
- Devise and deploy systems for monitoring the relevant open source projects. For example, a system which monitors open source chat apps and lists changes to cryptography related sections. Make code review of sensitive files trivial
- The government won't follow its own laws, and will use apps which are not backdoored. Use FOIA or anything similar to check what apps are used/purchased by officials and point out the hypocrisy
- Run cryptography workshops for your people. Make cryptography cool. Make it fashionable. Make songs and art about it. The government will prefer that people are uneducated on the topic -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 29-Nov-2018 17:05:54 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"the thing is, a lot of those people [kids on Arpanet in the 1970s] felt outcast by societyβthey were geeks; their families and their fellow students didnβt understand them; they had nobody. And we welcomed them into the community [at MIT AI lab] and invited them to learn and start to do some useful work. It was amazing for them not to be treated as trash."
-- Richard Stallman -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 22-Nov-2018 15:36:32 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
On the EFF stuff about pushing companies to stand with their users it's worth remembering that after web 2.0 the user was no longer the customer and so the business incentives changed massively. Encouraging companies to go against their customers and side with the users is always going to be a very hard sell.
So if you want to pressure companies in this way you'll have to pressure them to change their business models. Doing anything else will just be like deckchairs on the Titanic. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 18-Nov-2018 23:51:14 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
The report on the sustainability of open source, written by Nadia Eghbal in 2016, identifies the problem well enough but doesn't have much of a solution.
It's written from the venture capital perspective, so startup culture is uncritically endorsed and there are various other questionable assumptions about corporate involvement. In some places there are also references to the myth of the lone developer ("rockstar" type thinking).
The problem it describes is that the current economy depends heavily on software and that underneath the glossy startups the infrastructure comprises largely of Free Software developed and maintained by a relatively small community of "key contributors". The software economy is mostly free riding upon the digital infrastructure base, and there isn't much systematic thinking about how to keep the infrastructure level going in the longer term.
I'd describe this problem in terms of the failing social reproduction of developers. It might be easier than ever to learn python, but it can be hard to make ends meet while running a software project, even if it's vital to the free rider economy.
It gives the classic example of OpenSSL - something which runs on the majority of internet servers and yet which in 2014 at the time of heartbleed was maintained by just one developer in precarious circumstances and hardly funded. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 18-Nov-2018 22:50:39 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement."
-- Richard Stallman -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Nov-2018 07:18:46 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
This article is disingenuous on a number of levels. https://itsfoss.com/why-firefox
The idea that they are somehow against Google and monopolists while being paid by them, and having them as the default search. The idea that statistical data about precisely how you use the browser is somehow not personal. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 05-Nov-2018 22:16:41 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@puffinux @jeffcliff As if TBL hadn't already lost enough credibility.
This isn't going to help anyone who needs help. Dissidents will still be persecuted. Companies will still conduct surveillance on their users in unethical and non-consenting ways. They will also continue to ignore data protection rules and construct search engines designed to enable government censorship and spying.
Also companies like Cloudflare are a joke and they have zero credibility with anyone who knows how the internet works.
After decades of trying to improve rights in the digital space we know what kinds of things work. Licenses, if properly vetted by copyright lawyers, are known to work. Encryption, if appropriately implemented and audited, works. Systems designed to be "offline first" and go under the radar of most other things are known to provide some level of protections to people who need it.
Vague pledges have never worked. Companies and governments routinely break their promises and think nothing of it. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 05-Nov-2018 21:18:45 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Never π trust π vague π pledges π made π by π companies π or π governments π
https://contractfortheweb.org -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 29-Oct-2018 15:04:25 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@Wolf480pl @fosdem @aral @wodan @danielinux @Shamar
It's complicated. Fosdem has been sponsored by Google for a long time afaik. There is probably some non-trivial overlap between FOSS developers and Googlers. And also many people are within the trance of the mainstream media and so unaware of the things it misrepresents or just leaves out entirely.
I think we should get companies like Google out of conferences, but boycotting them isn't necessarily the best way to do it unless there's an alternative one to attend. Otherwise you're merely helping the silo companies by breaking up community events for the few developers who could meaningfully oppose them.
A better way to do it might be to ensure that the organizers don't have a complacent attitude. To give companies like Google a limited platform (if any) in terms of speakers and to ensure that there is critical evaluation of what they say or do. Don't give them an easy ride like they got in the past. Just encouraging more attendees to adopt a critical attitude towards the software they're using, rather than the Sillycon Valley attitude of breathless enthusiasm for any new BS being pushed by a $bigcorp, would do a lot of good. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 27-Oct-2018 09:19:15 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
I usually disagree with Jaron Lanier, but on this he's right: that it's not so much about "algorithms" but about companies and their business models. Even the prison example goes back to that.
And then you can ask why are the business models like they are. Why don't they just change to something more beneficial?
Because capitalism. Ultimately that's the real problem. The rest is consequences. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 14-Oct-2018 09:37:08 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/welfare-sanctions-are-killing-people-with-chronic-illnesses-such-as-type-1-diabetes
I also know of other people who were not newsworthy because they were just proles. The state didn't kill them directly, but it did kill them by withdrawing services which they depended upon to survive. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 13-Oct-2018 21:01:39 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
peertube appears to require Twitter settings in the configuration, otherwise the daemon fails. I don't want any dependency upon Twitter.
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