Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 22

“Kurdish Afrin is democratic and LGBT-friendly. Turkey is crushing it with Britain’s help. Northern Syria’s Kurds are establishing direct democracy and a gender revolution. Why are we arming jihadist-linked Turkey?”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/16/turkey-democracy-kurdish-afrin-britain-syria-arming

I have Turkish parents and I was a Turkish citizen. I strongly urge you to read this, take notice, and – if you can – take action to get our representatives in Europe and elsewhere to put an end to this gross injustice.

It’s not AI vs people
It’s not Big Data vs people
It’s not robots vs people

It’s corporations vs people.

@rook @Framasoft @angristan FSF doesn’t have a patent on ethics. Open source, however, is notable for having come into existence as an allergic reaction to the ethics and morality in free software by businesses that did not want ethics or morality to impede their ability to fence off the commons, adopt free as in free labour, and implement open as privatisation.

The Difference Between Free/Libre and Open Source

“Free/Libre = Open Source + Ethics
<=>
Open Source = Free/Libre - Ethics”

—Christophe Lafon-Roudier, @Framasoft

I walk into a talk on HTML5 video. Look up the speaker’s company. In their privacy policy, they state that they share personal data for advertising, do not honour Do Not Track, etc. I think I was just confused about #FOSDEM because they mention “free software” and “libré” alongside “open source”. The love affair with #adtech I’m seeing makes sense if they’re just an “open source” conference. So, my bad, it’s just not what I thought it was based on how it brands itself.

#surveillancecapitalism

#FOSDEM “cornerstone sponsor” is people farmer and titan of #SurveillanceCapitalism, Google.

Their business model is to track you on their own services and devices, across the web, and beyond and then use this intimate insight into you, your family, and your loved ones to manipulate your behaviour for profit.

Can someone remind me what principles #FOSDEM stands for again? Maybe Greenpeace is missing a trick by not having Exxon Mobil as a sponsor.

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/JKuneFOg0u33t5M4oBw

“In a new project, the RSA and DeepMind are creating space for citizens to consider trade-offs in the use of AI” (https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2017/10/the-role-of-citizens-in-developing-ethical-ai)

Here’s the letter I sent the RSA, both as a fellow and as someone who has presented an RSA talk on the subject, on how their partnership with Google/DeepMind/Alphabet, Inc. and this framing legitimises the false dichotomy at the heart of #SurveillanceCapitalism that there is a necessary tradeoff between modern technology and #privacy. https://mastodon.ar.al/media/DLpOYZB7IQpDYnzTq1U

I want to make one thing very clear regarding #fosdem2018 #fosdem

A conference on freedom-and-human-rights-respecting technology should not have a titan of #SurveillanceCapitalism like Google as sponsor. The good people in our community shouldn’t have to choose between having a platform to meet up at and having their legitimacy usurped by association to whitewash such companies. I’m attending under protest to meet and chat to some lovely members of the community.

Google doesn’t belong there.

The punk rock internet – how DIY rebels are working to replace the tech giants

Today, in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/01/punk-rock-internet-diy-rebels-working-replace-tech-giants-snoopers-charter

“I got into the web because I liked the democracy of it,” says Kalbag, who has just published a book titled Accessibility for Everyone… “I want to be able to be in a society where I have control over my information, and other people do as well … I think we have to have technology that serves everybody – not just rich, straight, white guys.”

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/24IVAeiWDTK-DrYehWw

@cwebber @alcinnz @datatitian Unless Facebook, Twitter, and Google change their core business models, their adoption of ActivityPub would be for one of two purposes: either (a) embrace and extend (with proprietary extensions. e.g., Google: AOSP and Google Play Services) or (b) PR.

What excites me about ActivityPub is the potential it holds for independent alternatives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter to emerge with completely different business models (including, eg., commons-funded & coop).

So Decent is pretty fucking amazing!

Check it out on: http://gwenbell.com

(An in-browser social network based on Scuttlebot and Minbase with seamless on-boarding. Seriously easier to get started with than a centralised social network like Facebook. Very, very impressed!)

PS. I’m @aral on there.

#decent #securescuttlebutt #ssb

I spoke with The Guardian for a podcast recently and it’s now live: Digital dystopia: tech slavery and the death of privacy.

“Is the internet broken? And has the utopian 90s net been replaced by digital feudalism, where a few powerful entities wield control over all of us digital serfs? … To kick off, we explore whether our privacy has been compromised by the tech giants whose business models depend on harvesting and monetising our data.“

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2018/jan/12/digital-dystopia-end-of-privacy-tech-podcast

Design or Decoration?

IxDA Berlin just released the video from my talk at September’s event (and they’ve done a great job of editing it, thank you).

Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/243516363

#decoration #surveillancecapitalism #ux #xd #design #foss #decentralisation #indienet https://mastodon.ar.al/media/xyXZJweAJXYP5o8HtIQ

Thank you Heydon Pickering for removing remote loading of Google Fonts on The Paciello Group’s Hugo-based inclusive documentation builder, Cupper (https://thepaciellogroup.github.io/cupper/). As a developer, the easiest way to fight #SurveillanceCapitalism is to not let the people who trust you be tracked by companies like Google. e.g., do you use Google Analytics? Don’t. It’s the most prevalent tracker on the web & allows Google its panopticon-like vantage. Stop using it. Do your bit.

https://github.com/ThePacielloGroup/cupper/issues/28

Federated GitLab? Yes, please…

I run my own GitLab. You run your own GitLab. Your GitLab sends my GitLab a pull request.

How cool would that be?

If you’d like to see that, take a moment to upvote issue #4013: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4013

Snippet: Fade out punctuation in ES6 (Atom)

https://source.ind.ie/snippets/27

If you’re coming from years of being spoiled by the beautiful syntax of CoffeeScript, your eyes might appreciate some respite from the vulgar onslaught of punctuation in ES6. This little Atom editor snippet, which you should place in your styles.less file (Settings → Open Config Folder), enables you to fade them as much as you like. https://mastodon.ar.al/media/rfXfMuwUqQ8Dus9Q4II

Awesome Selfhosted

This is a list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted locally.

https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

#indie

The internet is broken… but the web’s top minds have a plan to fix it

I’m in Wired UK’s cover package this month, advocating (surprise, surprise) for a decentralised, free and open, and commons-based Internet of people.

“Imagine a world where every citizen owns and controls their own place on the internet.”

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/is-the-internet-broken-how-to-fix-it

#freedom #humanrights #technology https://mastodon.ar.al/media/G21n8wZfF6OzIGM3d2g https://mastodon.ar.al/media/ptSKjqAQB2hFf_AYiaQ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/7JnRzK-FD62hCOCyy7s https://mastodon.ar.al/media/H-bYng3u37c6vY-OX9g

Plain ES6, CoffeeScript 2, Elm, Or… for a new Node.JS project in 2018?

So, fediverse, would welcome your thoughts. I’m a big fan of CoffeeScript for its elegance. Not sure if using 2 would pose interoperability issues with libraries in 1 (eg. =>) & whether the additional inconsistencies with JS (eg., async keyword not being required for async functions) would make it confusing for other team members…

Bracket hell be damned, I’m actually considering plain JS using standard style… thoughts?

Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance

“The intelligence community hoped that the nation’s leading computer scientists could take non-classified information and user data, combine it with what would become known as the internet, and begin to create for-profit, commercial enterprises to suit the needs of both the intelligence community and the public.”

#SurveillanceCapitalism HT @onreact

https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/LfkfDVO36_Xqs7JuK34