Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 23

Immersing myself in the ActivityPub, ActivityStreams, and JSON-LD specs this weekend.

PS. Anyone know any ActivityPub server + client implementations in JS/Node? (Before I reinvent the wheel?) Cursory glance at GitHub revealed ones in esoteric hobby languages but nothing I could find in the lingua franca of the web.

Partials and caching support in Set

Set is my unobtrusive and DRY template engine for Node.js and browsers. It lets you write your templates in plain HTML and requires no mapping code. And it now has partials (implemented via HTML comments) and document caching support.

Enjoy!

• Main: https://ind.ie/labs/set/
• Partials: https://ind.ie/labs/set/partials
• Document caching: https://ind.ie/labs/set/document-caching
• Source: https://source.ind.ie/project/set/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/y_0erhOK6sxRv5pnOZU https://mastodon.ar.al/media/n1no8QmvIXzbaUXvx-8

Mass surveillance isn’t about safety, it’s about control

“The UK government approved the export of controversial surveillance equipment to the Republic of Macedonia…

The Macedonian government that acquired the equipment subsequently collapsed…

…after leaked audio tapes showed the Macedonian secret services had illegally spied on the country’s citizens, including politicians, civil society activists and journalists, since at least 2011.”

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/UK-sale-of-surveillance-equipment-to-Macedonia-raises-questions-over-export-licence-policy

Via @mirela

Right, so this is it: https://matrix.org/blog/2017/08/24/the-librem-5-from-purism-a-matrix-native-smartphone/

PS. @Fairphone this is what I was telling you you should be doing. (There’s still lots of time to start down the same track.)

💓 to the @Purism and @matrix folks – you’re entirely on the right path.

#matrix #purism https://mastodon.ar.al/media/zClKXOo1fBETWTOGcc0

Disroot

“We want to encourage people to break free of the walled gardens of popular software and turn to open and ethical alternatives, may it be on our platform or on another (or you could even host your own).“

Awesome project (and how lovely to see my foreword for Trine Falbe’s excellent White Hat UX book quoted on the site – http://whitehatux.com)

Best of luck with this, folks! 😎👍

Visit: https://disroot.org

Follow: @disroot

Via @notabene

#ethicaltech

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/taUUNtqKcX6FGwxoipM

@bob @h @chirart And the more we approach every node in the network having the same weight (e.g., instances of one on Mastodon), the closer we get to eliminating the economies of scale that attract the investment (e.g., VC) that allow the centralised nodes to scale vertically and coalesce (e.g., via mergers and acquisitions). The evolution of a decentralised network topology where every node is equal is a necessary foundation for a post-capitalist world.

Last day of #GeneralAssembly kicks off. I’m up in a few minutes to speak on cyborg rights.

Watch live: http://www.general-assembly.net/en/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/g212yCOoMa9qj0UkcmY https://mastodon.ar.al/media/4ZhQ8YBkcmAkOi7s9oU https://mastodon.ar.al/media/3xxdDpvg3UzdLyvEzTY https://mastodon.ar.al/media/0xfV5XtX2O1WA-WrJeU

Non Breaking Space Show: Certain Unalienable Cyborg Rights

Had a lovely, casual late-night chat about technology, surveillance, human rights, and democracy last Friday with Christopher and Simon.

The video podcast is now out.

Watch it at:

https://goodstuff.fm/nbsp/136

#SurveillanceCapitalism #Privacy https://mastodon.ar.al/media/Az1JRt3bdLqxPu5Hi3s

GitLab raises $20M from Google (Ventures) – the key word here is “fork”

Today, on Venture Capital Ruins Everything, we have the lovely folks at GitLab (which we use and love at Ind.ie) raising $20M from GV (née Google Ventures).

Investors invest in the exit so imagine what GitLab’s exit will look like after this. If any competent folks are thinking of a fork, now is a good time to start doing prep work. Think ownCloud/Nextcloud…

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab-raises-20m-series-c-round-led-by-gv/ https://mastodon.ar.al/media/6ESFuEQKOl2W3uqLqcs

Talks this week: Berlin & Milan

I’m off to Berlin, tomorrow, to present “Design or Decoration?” at IxDA Berlin:

http://ixdaberlin.de/?event=62#62

Then, I fly to Milan on Thursday to speak at Desire For Meaning:

http://it.openmaker.eu/2017/09/11/desire-for-meaning-a-milano/

Looking forward to hopefully seeing some of you in person this week :)

OpenNIC: the unsung hero of the future?

So I’m ashamed to say that I’ve basically been ignorant of the fact that there’s been an alternate democratic/open/post-Capitalist domain name system operating since 2000. It’s called OpenNIC (https://www.opennic.org/) and – with a bit of design love and creative marketing – I don’t see why we couldn't get widespread support for it. It would be a huge step forward for decentralisation/individual sovereignty. https://mastodon.ar.al/media/upXlzzLil5JHFbxONJQ

This is a photo of a crashed kiosk advertising the menu and offers at a popular Norwegian pizza restaurant chain. It shows that the kiosk was running facial recognition and basic sentiment analysis on the people looking at it.

Based on the number of people who sent me this on Twitter, it’s clear that people care and are unhappy with corporate surveillance.

The worst bit? Compared to what Google and Facebook do daily and at scale, this is a toy.

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/OFTGkS78V6DEAm2KkZU