I'm speaking at #fossy2024 in just under two weeks. First, I'm doing an updated co-presentation with my son about teaching #softwarefreedom concepts to children. Second, I'm co-presenting an updated overview of the economics of public goods to set the stage for a panel discussion on FLO funding dilemmas.
#Switzerland mandates #OpenSource software for all public software!
This makes perfect sense. Public software should be transparent. #India could have taken a lead on this, but our digital public infrastructure is mostly closed-source - with predictable consequences. 🙄
Listening to Jesse Mulligan & Dr Ravi Iyer about how #BigTech is harming kids... He's ex-Meta (Facebook). Seems to me those who have thought it acceptable to work for BigTech should be treated skeptically by default because they showed poor judgement taking that job & have probably rationalised their role, so that whatever they've done in the past still allows them to be 'good'. Unless they're openly contrite about having worked in Big Tech & ashamed, they're probably not worth listening to.
Everyone I know that actually trains as a sprinter is so violently opposed to terminology that implies knowledge work should be approached that way, yet we still call it a "sprint".
I feel like we could just call it a "fortnight" and half the Scrum industry would instantly evaporate as pseudo-leaders realize that you can't program at max speed forever in enterprise environments.
Unfortunately, at that point someone would invent "Faster Sprints" to recapture the gullible dweeb market.
Amazing to see professional infosec people (working for NZ gov't) defending the use of a CrowdStrike rootkit on 'enterprise' systems. What terrifying brainwashing these poor people have undergone. These 'outsource' corporations (both CrowdStrike & Microsoft, among others) are entirely unworthy of your confidence.
It's hard to get ready for a studious day at high-school while also seeing adults do nothing about climate change
#Firefox , you were the least bad #browser .
I guess you still are, but trying hard to catch up, aren't you?
Thanks for enabling a #privacy violation without asking me on a profile with enhanced #tracking protection on.
I have over 20 profiles and I can't find a working way to disable it everywhere at once -_-
In case you missed it, #BookWyrm is the Fediverse's alternative to Amazon's Goodreads.
BookWyrm lets you keep track of what you're reading, publish book reviews and discover new books from other people's recommendations. It's part of the Fediverse, so you can follow BookWyrm accounts from Mastodon etc. More info at:
There are BookWyrm servers where you can sign up at:
➡️ https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances
You can also follow BookWyrm news at @bookwyrm
Wow, our crucial public services (and business/commerce systems) are so completely badly run. No one seems to have considered that the world's crucial computer systems are completely dependent on a low quality, poorly managed, insecure, woefully fragile software monoculture. And those managing it act like they're surprised. This has been obvious to many of us for a decade. How are those managers even still employed?
The FCC has voted to more closely regulate prison telecom services, a move that will significantly cut the exorbitant fees that families pay to communicate with incarcerated people. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/07/18/fcc-vote/
Z. Zane McNeill: “Armed with terms like ‘dirt femme,’ ‘granny witch,’ ‘fag hillbilly,’ ‘plant queer,’ and ‘gay redneck,’ a new generation of Appalachian queer artists, activists, and emerging scholars have decided to reclaim ‘Appalachia’ as an inherently queer space. ...
For many of us, self-definition of Appalachia is in and of itself activism: by reclaiming what it means to be ‘Appalachian,’ we imagine a place of resilience in which *y’all* really means *all.*”
Read more in Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1240
"Billionaires decide who the presidential candidates will be. Not voters.
Oligarchs decided long ago to evade taxation, give countries away to Putin, thwart climate action & fry the planet, let Chinese cryptocurrency hijack fiscal policy, end unions, and erase a century of progress on civil rights."
Latest comic: Lowering the temperature
#uspol #cartoon #2024election #authoritarianism #fascism #media #politics
Make your own JD Vance comic. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/7/19/2255560/-Cartoon-Make-your-own-J-D-Vance-comic
Academic authors 'shocked' after Taylor & Francis sells access to their research to Microsoft AI
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/academic-authors-shocked-after-taylor--francis-sells-access-to-their-research-to-microsoft-ai
Authors have expressed their shock after the news that academic publisher Taylor & Francis, which owns Routledge, had sold access to its authors’ research as part of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnership with Microsoft—a deal worth almost £8m ($10m) in its first year.
Facebook jettisons a tool that many, many disinformation fighters (including me) found essential to our work. The replacement is, relatively speaking, junk. https://www.proofnews.org/meta-is-getting-rid-of-crowdtangle-and-its-replacement-isnt-as-transparent-or-accessible/
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa