Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@Zee I'll just put in a plug for Big Blue Button right here:

https://bigbluebutton.org/

They have optimised for educational use cases, but it's an excellent online meeting platform as well.

BREAKING: Politico reports that Senator Cantwell says she will delay hotlining the Kids Online Safety Act (#KOSA) because of ongoing concerns around LGBTQ rights and the need for further changes.

This is an important win for human rights. But we have so much more to do

@lightweight

"LaTeX can save about
two months formatting time
off the average 3–4 year PhD writing cycle."
-- Peter Flynn

@yojimbo @loke @A11yAwareness

Use the 'new' Microsoft Outlook and share your information with 766 third-party companies.

Don't forget, if you add a non-Microsoft email account, *all* of your email, contacts, calendar events, and other data will be stored at Microsoft.
https://godforsaken.website/@Shrigglepuss/111482466182637440

https://tuta.com/blog/outlook-shares-passwords-with-microsoft

#microsoft #privacy #outlook #MicrosoftOutlook #MicrosoftOffice

Do any of our readers live near the big empty lot in #Somerville's Gilman Square Green Line station? I'd love to talk with neighbors for a story I'm working on – give me a call at 207-310-0728.

phosh 0.33.0 is out 🚀📱:

Allows to toggle password visibility on/off in all modal dialogs, new
🔒-screen plugin to launch tasks, improved support for Indic languages ➕ UI and troubleshooting tab improvements in mobile settings.

Check out the full release notes at https://phosh.mobi/releases/rel-0.33.0/

#phosh #librem5 #gnome #linux #mobile #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux #gnomemobile

Almost a million #children in the #UK do not own a book | #Books | The Guardian

This is shameful but it’s also linked to #poverty.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/28/almost-a-million-children-in-the-uk-do-not-own-a-book-national-literacy-trust

#Literacy #Illiteracy #Education

🚨 This #GivingTuesday, we have great news!

A few generous supporters have pledged to match donations, dollar-for-dollar, up to $150,000, to help your gift to Freedom of the Press Foundation go even further.

Donate today!

https://freedom.press/donate/

I think the idea of millions of servers with 100 members who pay $1 a month is a highly sustainable model of decentralized social media. It’s been really easy to manage my duties as an admin this past year and anyone who is thinking of running a server next year, I’m happy to chat. I think launching more smaller instances is the way to go and grow because the federation actually works when it works.

The brilliant Molly White (@molly0xfff) has given us the best coverage of the scam-ridden cryptocurrency "marketplace" -- a public service in a time when tech journalism resembles fanzines.

In a new piece, she turns her attention to deeply unattractive but central tenets of Silicon Valley's current mania, AI.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-obfuscation

Savor every word.

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

SF Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated OTD in 1978, wasn't just "openly gay," as he is often called. He was specifically building a coalition that included working people, union leaders, the #LGBTQ+ community, people of color, disabled folks, young people, and elders. That's why he was so dangerous to the Establishment. And that coalition never recovered.

How rich. The latest EFF newsletter has as a flagship article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/address-online-harms-we-must-first-do-privacy and then, in the same post, it entreats people to take a 'community survey' which requires community members to use a Microsoft form. Oh the painful, grating irony. EFF, I, for one, suggest you review your institutional principles, especially given the ease with which you could use an uncompromised platform for running a survey. I know I won't trust Microsoft with my data.

@eff we hear a lot about the 'enshittification' of software services, especially social media... Well, it seems to be happening increasingly to *formerly* principle-led institutions which 'corporatise', experience a frenzy of growth, & let people who don't "get" their principles at all to run things: admirable principles diluted the point of irrelevance. Please don't let it happen to you, EFF. The world needs a *principle-led* organisation with your stated mission & relevant internal skills.

Cop28 host UAE planned to promote oil deals during climate talks - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/27/cop28-host-uae-planned-promote-oil-deals-climate-talks what a total disgrace #cop28 will be...

Thirty years of Internet have shown me that:

1. Self hosting is always worth the trouble.
2. Open source is always a better option in the long run.

https://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/43258.html
Regarding California's "Age-Appropriate Design Act":
"Both the oral argument before the court and the judge's ruling granting the preliminary injunction cited to us as an example of a service the law would require to collect more user data than we want to, and to use it in ways we find horrifying, in order to demonstrate all the (many) ways the law is pretextual and show that its actual goal is controlling your speech and ending anonymity online."

@siderea have you heard of User Experience Design or HCI? They don’t get respected as much as they ought to, but they do at least exist.

And nobody goes to get these resources, nobody seeks out this expertise, who does not move past the naive arrogance of assuming there's nothing that they need to learn, that they have this social media platform thing all figured out already.

What I am hoping to achieve by this thread is to tantalize you with the evidence that there are things to know which you probably don't yet know, but would, if you only knew, like very much to know. Things that would benefit you to know.

I am hoping to enlist your curiosity in tackling to the floor the assumption you might harbor in your breast that this social media thing really isn't all that hard, you just do it in the right way, and which way is the right one is really obvious.

I am attempting to entice you with the knowledge that is out there (and insofar as there are experts in these things here on Mastodon, in here with us) into wanting that knowledge enough to go looking for it.

And to ask for it.

🧵