Notices by Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net), page 9
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Jun-2018 20:21:11 UTC 
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"In order to make any meaningful progress, we must at least agree that the Googles and the Facebooks of the world are not forces for good. On the contrary, they are threats to our human rights and democracy. We must at least agree that they are not our partners, sponsors, and friends, but our adversaries. Even today, we are not at this point. Even today, institutions that purport to advocate for human rights and democracy feature Google and Facebook as partners and sponsors."
A really good example of that was the Personal Democracy Forum earlier in the year, sponsored by those companies and promanently fearuring Google and Facebook speakers. It's hard to discuss what democracy means, or should become, in the internet era if Facebook is dominating the narrative. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 21-Jun-2018 21:56:12 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"We take the existence of borders for granted simply because weβve always been told they are real, and the borders with our neighbors have remained unchanged during our lifetimes.
In reality, they are not real. In fact, while I can say with all certainty this will not happen in the foreseeable future, it is entirely possible that all of the borders dividing all of the countries all over this world could be erased in a single day.
In a sense, we are hostages of the countries in which we are born, held captive by artificial borders. We are not asked if we would like to be a citizen of the nation in which weβre born."
-- Margaret Donnelly -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Jun-2018 16:52:35 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Jun-2018 08:25:57 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@Framasoft My one reservation of #peertube is the use of a nonfree mp4 codec as the default. This means that in most cases I can't view video. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Jun-2018 21:24:48 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 18-Jun-2018 22:51:31 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"Freezers" https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/18/whatever-what-happens-kids-taken-families-us-border -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Jun-2018 14:26:40 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
On the security questions I know it would be unpopular but I'd suggest running Arch or an Arch based distro. If your packages are all quite close to the head of development then there are not as many known exploitable bugs and any adversary will probably have to resort to zerodays, which is risky and expensive for them.
The fear of Arch breakng all the time is actually unfounded. It might have been true long ago, but it hasn't been my experience. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 14-Jun-2018 08:30:35 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@bernini The idea of a European identity which needs to be protected is also a problem. Really we are just humans on an orbiting rock. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 08-Jun-2018 18:48:01 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 07-Jun-2018 08:21:31 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@tuttle @zoowar @luke @bobjonkman @veg05 @mcscx2 @theru @kat @mmn @grmpyoldman @ghostdancer @merce I made a people's history of the fediverse at https://wiki.freedombone.net -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Jun-2018 16:47:33 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Jun-2018 22:58:27 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Comically, it looks like Riot creates a new identity every time I open a Firefox browser. It's obviously expecting me to never clear caches. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 04-Jun-2018 10:51:48 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Microsoft couldn't give a rats ass for software freedom. They despise people like me. All their ventures into FOSS, including funding the Linux Foundation, are narrowly self-serving. They continue to extort FOSS developers with software patents.
Microsoft are about as ethical as a drone strike on a wedding party. I've been around in software for a long time, so have seen their manoevrings. They boasted about the extensiveness of their cooperation with the NSA and bugged Skype after they bought it (read the Snowden docs). -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 01-Jun-2018 20:06:02 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
If current trends continue then what is a bit controversial for Google now will be a completely routine and unremarkable aspect of their business model in a few years.
The Google story spans from some guys making a search engine to being at the heart of the military/industrial complex carrying out assassinations with AI.
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/31/google-leaked-emails-drone-ai-pentagon-lucrative -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 31-May-2018 09:29:40 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 29-May-2018 23:01:26 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
It's hard to believe now, but in the 1980s and 1990s neoliberal policies enjoyed a high level of support. Narratives about the benefits of privatization and outsourcing tended to be believed back then.
Now it's a very different situation. The old guard hang onto power with the same policies as 30 years ago, but few people believe in them anymore and it's more like going through the motions because "this is what we've always done".
It's possible that the next generation of politicians might have a very different attitude. I think it's also possible that we're entering into another "age of revolutions" because there's a kind of perfect storm of economic, environmental and social problems impinging from all sides. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 28-May-2018 19:45:02 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@gc If this happens I think they will try to buy the biggest instances, pour money and developers into making the user experience - particularly on mobile - as slick as possible and then add ActivityPub extensions which make it incompatible with other instances. After enough time had passed they would then drop support for ActivityPub and OStatus.
That's pretty much how web 2.0 pushed out the earlier federated groupware systems.
Ways to work against this are:
* Make it easy to block bad instances
* Discourage very large instances with thousands of users, which will be the most attractive for colonization.
* Promote general awareness of the kinds of tactics which have been used in the past against federated systems
* Encourage users to value community above convenience. Colonizers will try to dazzle users with convenience and shiny/trendy features.
* Create a lot of noise if there is any company trying to subvert open protocols with their own extensions.
* Make it easy for users to switch instances, aka "nomadic identity" so that they can "vote with their feet" if an instance starts adopting bad policies. The difficulty of moving from one instance to another is definitely something which colonizers will try to exploit. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 25-May-2018 20:05:09 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Public service announcement -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 25-May-2018 13:38:24 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 24-May-2018 22:55:56 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
So here's a heretical thought. Should there be a new encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia? Maybe using ActivityPub and fediverse accounts.
Wikipedia was the poster child of an open approach, but somewhere along the line it became something else.
If we started Wikipedia again from scratch what features should it have to mitigate the problems which the legacy Wikipedia encountered?
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