Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 105

@humanetech thanks for explicitly linking. They are also linked in the blog piece by @emacsen that I as responding to.

@noorul aww shucks :-P

@Wolf480pl MMP is easier to understand while voting. In MMP, you get two votes, party and person. In STV you get one vote but you rank candidates in order of how much you want them to get it. But after the election, MMP can create all sorts of confusing and sometimes non-representative outcomes. Small centrist parties don't have to declare who they would and wouldn't govern with before the election, so they can feint one way in their campaign, then join a coalition leaning the other way.

@Wolf480pl yes, sorry for the ambiguity, both #MMP and #STV are forms of #ProportionalRepresentation. In #NZ we use MPP for central government elections, and STV for some local/ regional council elections. Having now voted in both styles of election, and seen the wider political effects (we've had MMP since the 1990s), I think STV is the better system.

@LWFlouisa my argument has always been that this mission creep is inherent in the idea of a "safer spaces policy", which implies Safer Spaces Policing. I've always argued for "guidelines" (which help keep us safe) instead of "ground rules" (which imply a ground ruler). See:
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/101391256760630157

@LWFlouisa new instance again? From the domain name, it seems like you'll be politically safer on that one? BTW you might be interested in an essay I posted recently, which critiques Safer Spaces Policing:
https://libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/universal-friendship-radical-goal-09012019

I'm trying to figure out how to verify an .ISO I just downloaded from #Debian. I've done this before, but there seem to be more steps now. This is painfully complicated. Is there some way we can make this easier for Jo User to understand the benefits of, and to do, the first time they are figuring out how to dual-boot #GNU #Linux?
https://www.debian.org/CD/verify

@Wolf480pl I guess so, otherwise why would there be a whole subreddit for them ;-P
@eldergoth @clacke

@noorul There's no shame in re-evaluating software choices based on new information, in fact it's something to be proud of. We all make strategic decisions about what apps and services to use, based on what options are available, and what information we have about them. For all its flaws, Signal is a better choice than WhatsApp or Telegram (because Signal publishes source code for its client *and* server software). Before #OMEMO, it was arguably a better choice than #XMPP. It's always a toss-up.

@noorul I just wanted to remind you of this:
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/101376302692253851

Unless you have any evidence of a relationship between OWS / Signal and the NSA that I'm not aware of? I mentioned the honeypot possibility as an example of a worst-case-scenario, I was *not* stating it as a known fact (AFAIK it isn't, and let's remember innocent until proven guilty).

@noorul like me, and you, and everyone, Bruce a) has more knowledge about some things than others, and b) comments on things from his own POV. A big part of #ThreatModelling is figuring out what kinds of adversaries you're trying to secure things against, and what the worst case scenario is if your security measures fail. Like I said, Bruce is pretty safe if any cryptography he uses happens to fail. Not so a dissident in Turkey, or Russia, or China. This distinction is crucial.

Wow, you guys are really overthinking my shower thoughts ... ;-P
@eldergoth @Wolf480pl @clacke

I suggest you check out the #ElectoralCommission, a non-partisan public service body that is responsible for overseeing all public elections in #NZ:
https://www.elections.org.nz/

If every US state had one of these, to run their internal elections, then federal elections could be run as a collaboration between them. Also, proportional representation is cool, but in hindsight I wish NZ had gone for #STV rather than #MMP.

Hey USAmercicans, I hear from some of you that you think your election systems are a bit shit:
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=90RajY2nrgk

@emacsen The #CodeOfConduct approach is better than ignoring the problem of exclusion altogether. But it doesn't solve the underlying problem of exclusion, it just changes the location and mechanics of the exclusion barrier. I've never seen CoCs as more than a stopgap, and I've long argued for a '#WelcomingSpaces' approach, as a replacement for Safer Spaces Policing. I think the Kind Communication Guidelines are a great contribution by Stallman, perhaps his most important one since the #GNU GPL.

"In the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines announcement, RMS explicitly states that diversity is not a goal of his."
- @emacsen
https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/10/19/gkcg-is-bad/

If you look at the whole quote, this totally misrepresents what Stallman is saying, which is about diversity within "a specific free software project". In other words, if a project has one developer, who happens to be a straight, white man, nothing is gained by trying to shoehorn gay, POC, or female developers into that project.

"I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D."
- #RichardStallman
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-10/msg00001.html

@noorul BTW With all due respect to #LauraPoitras, she is a journalist not a programmer, and she relies on people like Snowden (or Drew) to tell her which apps are safe to use. #BruceSchneier is a public figure, and has very little to lose if his encrypted conversations turned out not to be secure. #MattGreen's quote is just about code quality. None of these endorsements have any bearing on whether the Signal service is safe for dissidents with 3-letter adversaries in their #ThreatModel to use.

@noorul I notice those quotes are not linked to sources. So we don't get to see *when* those things were said, or in what context, without doing a web search on the quote and trying to find the original. How convenient for #OWS. If Snowden recanted this opinion later, they could still leave that shining endorsement quote on the #Signal homepage, and most people would be none the wiser.

@noorul if I haven't already mentioned this, I note that the Signal website is *not* blocked by the Great Firewall, while almost any other website that mentions encryption, VPNs etc is blocked. I find this ... fishy, although I guess this could be #OWS using domain fronting? Not sure.