Kevin C. @kcoram@librem.one

Make sure you take the 🆓 #Firefox 72.0.1 update today. Better security at no cost to you! #security #cybersecurity
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/firefox-gets-patch-for-critical-zeroday-thats-being-actively-exploited/

As someone who creates ActivityPub services, it's often a puzzle to figure out exactly how someone else's service federates. Like, what does service X do when I send it a Delete/Note activity?

In an attempt to be a good citizen, I've drafted up a FEDERATION.md file for my fediverse event organizing service I'm working on. Here it is:

https://github.com/dariusk/gathio/blob/master/FEDERATION.md

I've also started a meta-discussion about how we might start documenting this stuff generally:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/documenting-federation-behavior-in-a-semi-standard-way/453

I just published "The Bot Scare", an essay about how the word "bot" is used in American political discourse. Among other things I compare it to the use of "Red" during the first Red Scare.

https://tinysubversions.com/notes/the-bot-scare/

In 2020 and beyond, the battle to save personhood and democracy requires a radical overhaul of mainstream technology

https://ar.al/2020/01/01/in-2020-and-beyond-the-battle-to-save-personhood-and-democracy-requires-a-radical-overhaul-of-mainstream-technology

Big picture, in the next decade, I would like to see:

1. Federated free software services become the dominant platform for social media and messaging.

2. A more privacy-oriented and cryptographically-literate public, and simple, standard free software tools anyone can leverage for this purpose.

3. Open hardware, especially RISC-V, becoming the dominant approach for new hardware development.

4. Recapturing the mobile market from proprietary walled gardens, instead favoring models which put the user in control of their devices (e.g. pmOS).

5. Average (read: non-SV CEO) technologists becoming more politically engaged, including running for and winning offices, and using political will to reinforce the above and start making a difference outside of tech

RT @TheRaDR@twitter.activitypub.actor
Instead of focusing on what you want to accomplish this next year, maybe spend some time thinking about who you want to *be*.

What attributes might you choose to actively cultivate?

Kindness? Humility? Healthier boundaries? Patience? Gratitude? Equanimity? Generosity? Wonder?

If you're new to Mastodon: welcome!

Here are a couple guides I've put together:

An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon, which tries to explain what this place is all about: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon/

So You're A Mastodon Moderator, which has some information on the tools at your disposal and some best practices for using them (it needs an update, but is still generally accurate): https://noelle.codes/so_youre_a_mastodon_moderator.pdf

So I have an announcement. I sent an email to my work saying that I wanted to be able to focus on my work on taking advancing the federated social web to the next level. Read: better security / abuse resistance, richer interactions, virtual worlds.

How will I be funded to do this? I don't know. I do know that the state of the political world scares me enough that I feel I have to do this. If you want to support me: https://www.patreon.com/cwebber

Wish me luck. More updates soon.

I'm a fan of both the Fediverse and IndieWeb—which I, a web designer, find a lot "easier." I mean, I already knew about semantic markup (and microformats, to some extent). Also, I actually like writing HTML.

I was interviewed by AIGA (the American Institute for Graphic Arts) design magazine about Friend Camp, federated social media, and my Run Your Own Social project! (It is for some reason published on an Adobe blog? idk how institutional partnerships work but here we are)

https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/perspectives/social-impact/private-social-media-small-social-networks/?scid=2ef9404e-a317-467c-853a-a14bbe6ec01b&mv=social&mv2=owned_social

I have put my article "Fed up with Big Tech" on my Small Tech blog: https://ghost.sndm.me/fed-up-with-big-tech/

An easy tutorial to help make sure your #Docker containers are secure with the latest #security #updates https://chriswiegman.com/2019/12/keeping-docker-containers-updated/

If you love working on the command-line as much as I do, you may like what I have been working on recently!

Meet glow - a stylish #markdown viewer for your shell:

https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

#introductions Yet another Hello World from yet another new user 👌

Scientists find cheaper way to make hydrogen energy out of water

Hydrogen-powered cars may soon become more than just a novelty after a UNSW-led team of scientists demonstrated a much cheaper and sustainable way to create the hydrogen required to power them.

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-cheaper-hydrogen-energy.html