Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 18

Cheat sheet:

Open source: do anything you want with the source, including closing it off. (https://opensource.org/osd)

Free software: you can’t close it off either; you must share alike. (https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software)

Ethical technology: all of the above, and don’t make technology that violates human rights. (https://ind.ie/ethical-design)

Open Source is open as in “open for business”, free software guarantees a healthy commons, and ethical technology builds on free software but excludes unethical uses.

Meanwhile, the EU has voted to kill the Internet as we know it and possibly aid in creating an even bigger surveillance machine in the process.

Civil disobedience is the way forward on this one. We redouble our efforts to create decentralised alternatives and if they’re deemed illegal by this myopic legislation, so be it. Fuck ’em. We go to jail if we need to.

If you had any illusions that the battle for personhood and human rights would be easier in our age, think again.

#article13

This year, Apple is redefining the word advanced. This is the most advanced definition of the word advanced yet. We’re calling it Advanced XS. With Advanced XS, Apple is taking the word advanced to the next level. This is a huge day for the word advanced.

Now, Jony Ive will repeat exactly what we just said in a British accent.

Google can track surfing habits without need for HTTP Cookies
https://youbroketheinternet.org/trackedanyway

(submitted by walterbell)

Dear Fediverse,

Soon, some venture capitalist will put $5 million into a startup that offers free fediverse accounts with unlimited storage, etc.

Unless every other instance instantly blocks such a service from Day 1, you can kiss your fediverse goodbye and say hello to a new Gmail. Once network effects kick in, they will make the rules.

It _can_ happen here but you have an opportunity to kill it before it does.

#centralisation #fediverse

So, Fediverse, need your advice… I need two things:

1. A domain name registration API
2. #Hosting with a #VPS (ideally OpenStack) provisioning/setup API

That are:

* Based in the EU
* As ethical as possible given the industry (extra points for green) but definitely not engaged in any surveillance-based shenanigans and, of course, #GDPR compliant

Goal: have people be able to register a domain name and have a VPS set up at it in as little time as possible.

Any suggestions? :)

:indieHeart:

If your app catalogue isn’t a capitalist initiative, consider not calling it a store, shop, or marketplace. I love that F-Droid calls theirs a catalogue. Another suggestion: “library”.

If any of you are waiting on an approval to follow my account, that’s some sort of a bug. I don’t have follower approvals on. Not sure why that’s happening.

#Mozilla begrudgingly implements tracking protection by default, after being shamed into it yet again by Safari, the DuckDuckGo browser, and Gnome Web (just the ones I know who implemented it first) and talks a good talk while still having Google as its default search engine and continuing to get hundreds of millions from Google/Alphabet, Inc. – the largest surveillance capitalist in the world. (Mozilla Corp is ~entirely funded by surveillance capitalism.)

Hyprocrites.

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/08/30/changing-our-approach-to-anti-tracking/

Take a fucking bow, folks.

http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/

I’m all for speaking truth to power but I don’t understand screaming your version of someone else’s reality into their face while they categorically deny it & profess support for your cause until you break them down. What I’ve seen here is nothing short of bullying. And no, it doesn’t make it right because he was on a TV show once.

Don’t @ me. Or do; I know where the block button is & mine’s wired to mew like a kitten… it’s just the cutest 🐈

That moment when you ask the Current Weather app on your new phone to find your current location and it gives you the weather for where you used to live in a different country, before you even had the phone or the app. Hmm… 🤔

It’s not data ethics, it’s ethics.

It’s not data privacy, it’s privacy.

It’s not digital rights, it’s human rights in the digital/networked age.

Let’s make sure we keep the focus on what’s important and not allow well-understood terms, concepts, and existing rights to be redefined by those with vested interests in clouding* the conversation and eroding our human rights by backdooring in a new set of lesser rights for the digital/networked aspects of our selves.

* See what I did there? 😛

Number of accounts is the wrong success metric for the fediverse; number of instances is the correct one.

Absolute failure state of the fediverse is 7 billion accounts and one instance.

@tindall @enkiv2 It is quite mindblowing to me to see a criticism of the Web that entirely ignores the socioeconomic reasons for its being the way it is. The Web isn’t broken “because JavaScript”, mainstream technology, including the Web is broken because Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t build tools for people, it builds tools to farm people. All that bloat is the farming mechanisms: tracking you, profiling you, addicting you and placating you.

Just for the record: I love Mastodon.

Is it the end-game of the peer-to-peer, decentralised, end-to-end encrypted personhood-protecting platform(s) we need? No. Is it fucking awesome? Yes.

(Do I love you, @Gargron? Yes, I do) :)

It’s a beautiful brick on the bridge we must build between the centralised and peer-to-peer worlds.

Now let’s use it like the stepping stone that it is, be thankful that it exists, help make it even better, and interoperate with it on the road to greener pastures.

How To Get Flatpak Apps To Use The Correct Gtk Theme
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/05/how-to-get-flatpak-apps-to-use-correct.html

Distributions should be doing this by default. As far as I know, Pop!_OS does (unless I somehow installed it myself and forgot but I don’t think so).

@aral drew my attention to Pop!_OS. I've been using it on my laptop for a few days now. Current conclusion: I am very satisfied.

Thank you, @aral.

https://system76.com/pop

#PopOS