Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 21

I'm going to write a lot more about this in the coming days but the most important takeaway from my first few days of switching my main development machine to Linux (Pop!_OS 18.04)?

I. Do. Not. Miss. The. Mac. One. Bit.

Everything Just Works (tm), including my USB-C-only LG external monitor (which doesn't even work with Laura's older MacBook Pro), Magic Trackpad, etc. And there are things I actually enjoy more about the experience. Never thought I'd be writing this about Linux. Exciting times!

“What we have here is a factory farm for human beings, that has been publicly humiliated for how it treats its livestock, running internal audits to avoid future PR disaster.” – yours truly in The Guardian on Facebook’s “creation of an ‘Investigative Operations Team’ (IOT), to try and spot major abuses of its platform before they happen.”

https://theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/07/facebook-notes-from-a-scandal-investigative-operations-team-iot-rohingya-myanmar-cambodia-press

#SurveillanceCapitalism

Phones LineageOS 15.1 is officially supported on

LineageOS is the successor to Cyanogenmod – a Google-free, freedom technology alternative to stock Android that isn’t infected with Google Play Services (Google’s surveillance services) … Version 14.1 is stable and runs flawlessly on older hardware but if you’re looking for a new phone, this list I compiled may help.

Web+: dat://ar.al/2018/07/03/phones-lineageos-15.1-is-officially-supported-on/

Web: https://ar.al/2018/07/03/phones-lineageos-15.1-is-officially-supported-on/

Reclaiming RSS

“Before Twitter, before algorithmic timelines filtered our reality for us, before surveillance capitalism, there was RSS: Really Simple Syndication … As we move away from the centralised web to the peer web, it’s time to rediscover, re-embrace, and reclaim RSS.”

https://ar.al/2018/06/29/reclaiming-rss/

#ethicaltechnology

Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag: We're not sleepwalking into a dystopian future, we're there today

“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.”

https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/aral-balkan-and-laura-kalbag-were-not-sleepwalking-dystopian-future-were-there-today/

I’m very happy with how this interview we did with Nesta ended up. Laura and I will be speaking at Nesta’s FutureFest conference in London next week. (https://www.futurefest.org/)

I learned a new word today: Kyriarchy

(Thanks to @garbados)

Peer Web: dat://ar.al/2018/06/27/kyriarchy/

Centralised Web: https://ar.al/2018/06/27/kyriarchy/

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/ZH77v8tpC7-2-sXpLSo

I learned a new word today: Kyriarchy

(Thanks to @garbados

Peer Web: dat://ar.al/2018/06/27/kyriarchy/

Centralised Web: https://ar.al/2018/06/27/kyriarchy/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/rV1zx_Db318S6QbiIXM

Web+

My new site progressively enhances the centralised Web with peer-to-peer functionality using the DAT protocol. It’s a Web+ site: a little bridge between the centralised Web and the Peer Web.

Peer web: dat://ar.al/2018/06/26/web+/

Centralised web: https://ar.al/2018/06/26/web+/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/1dw4DNXcAmY6TRvoRxY

Watching with bated hope and suppressed trepidation as Turkey goes to the ballot box to determine if democracy has a future in the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/24/turkey-elections-muharrem-ince-threat-to-president-erdogan

#TAMAM

Hey folks, Todd Weaver, who leads @Purism (they make the privacy-respecting Librem laptops and are now working on a phone) is on the fediverse… show him some love, won’t ’cha?

@todd

:)

Today I learned that there are a number of Linux-based laptop shops in Europe.

Thank you, https://linuxpreloaded.com

Keep an eye on:

• StationX: https://stationx.rocks
• Star Labs: https://starlabs.systems
• Entroware: https://www.entroware.com/store/
• Tuxedo: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com
• Juno: https://junocomputers.com

Just asked Dell Ireland on Twitter to please explain to me why the exact same XPS 13 computer costs €630 more when it ships with Ubuntu – a free and open source operating system – than when it does with Windows 10.

https://twitter.com/aral/status/1005484980087197696

(I can only imagine it’s a typo and will be fixed. Otherwise, there are lots and lots of questions to be asked.)

#projectsputnik

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/i3w2ogAaDvgecPyn76M

The beauty of Mastodon is not only that it is free and open but that it’s federated. You can fork it without losing access to the network or your social graph. There’s no reason a hundred forks couldn’t exist.

Also, when did forking become an insult? As far as I’m concerned, it’s the biggest compliment you can pay a project. And if you fork and stay federated, you’re actually helping to strengthen the fediverse!

What you can’t do is force people to build what you want out of entitlement.

Is Gmail’s new “confidential mode” really confidential?

Sent a little video on Gmail’s new “confidential mode” (hint: not “confidential” and, no, Google hasn’t changed its business model) to Al Jazeera English for today’s Newsgrid programme. Segment airs in the 2nd half of this hour.

You can watch Newsgrid live from https://www.aljazeera.com/live/

@cypnk Depends where you live. In the EU we have more rights than US citizens and can demand that our data is permanently deleted. (Whether or not that applies to derived data is a gray area. And without algorithmic transparency and audits, how this is enforced/policed is another gray area.) Under GDPR we’ll be gaining further rights to limit data collection/retention (same caveats as before apply). None of it is enough to properly protect us, but some good first steps.

This week, I return to the belly of the beast to present at NextM in Stockholm. Last time, in Helsinki, Google got so pissed off they demanded they not go after me in Sweden. Let’s see if they influence the content of the events they sponsor or not… ;)

http://nextm.io/sweden/

Don't waste the Cambridge Analytica scandal: it's a chance to take control of our data

Excellent article by Scott Ludlam in the @guardian that cuts to the heart of the matter:

“What has been exposed here is not some unforceeable aberration, but an ordinary consequence of what Shoshana Zuboff calls ’surveillance capitalism’“

https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/dont-waste-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-its-a-chance-to-take-control-of-our-data

“‘Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have the same business model,’ says Balkan. ‘If Cambridge Analytica can sway elections and referenda with a relatively small subset of Facebook’s data, imagine what Facebook can and does do with the full set.’”

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-share-price-privacy
https://mastodon.ar.al/media/Xhu0iw-w7iv-npI2pA4
https://mastodon.ar.al/media/j--N5nlPXAyidSlRcg8