mcneely @mcneely@librem.one

I’ve noticed increasing developer interest in #ActivityPub and the #fediverse in the post-Musk social media universe, so I wrote it up for The New Stack. https://thenewstack.io/devs-are-excited-by-activitypub-open-protocol-for-mastodon/

Precedents like the German government running a Mastodon server are important beyond the obvious reasons. They reinforce the urgency of serious public funding for open code.

If we treated open code as part of the essential infrastructure of the 21st century and funded it at billions of USD/EUR as opposed to tiny grants here and there, the "fediverse" model of interconnected, self-governing communities would become the norm, not the exception.

See also (but not only): https://publiccode.eu/

One thing that's getting a little lost in this mix, is that some of the people desperately holding on at Twitter are because they are trapped by either healthcare or visas.

That there are systemic traps that trap worker in America so they feel unable to move freely to new employers who want them and would have better pay or conditions is *nuts* and deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

I'm legit thinking of starting a HN/Lobsters/Reddit/etc. type of link-sharing site focused squarely on "vanilla" #webdev topics. It would be very strict, e.g. posts about React would be banned, as would Tailwind "CSS". 😎

IMHO the signal-to-noise ratio on most (all?) of the existing channels is simply painful. As a mostly-vanilla web developer, I have zero interest in yet another "How to Build a Component with React and Tailwind" tutorial. Finding the meaty stuff out there is a real challenge!

https://twittoons.com/47

If some rich dude can buy the public square, then it wasn't the public square.

Good article from the @eff -

"The fediverse is an evolving project, and it won’t solve all of the challenges that we’ve seen with big social media platforms. Like other distributed systems, it does have some drawbacks and complications. But a federated social media ecosystem represents some possible escape hatches from some of the more serious problems we have been experiencing in the centralized, platform social media world."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/fediverse-could-be-awesome-if-we-dont-screw-it

#Inclusion #culturechange #govtech #DEI

A few days ago I was on a panel in DC for government employees, talking about how to increase diversity in their organizations. During Q&A I was asked about how to shift leadership minds at government agencies and suppliers towards being more open to inclusion initiatives. I told them that in my observations two things are key:

1) It depends on what the existing culture values
2) Working against the existing cultural value system won't work. Work with it

God *creates a worm* hello little buddy!

Worm: thanks for the "worm" welcome haha

God *creates birds*

@marcan I think it's simpler if you look at politics as the art of getting people with possibly big differences to work together in a project or a society or country or the world. more people means more politics, but it's never zero when your past the tribal cohesion limit

"no politics" is just "my politics" since that's the only way to avoid talking about the implied politics. which means "people like me, and not people unlike me" which simply is fascism

there is no quiet part here

RT @a2na@twitter.com

We are hiring!

Wikimedia is looking for an EU policy expert to join our team in Brussels. If you are passionate about digital policies and want to make a difference supporting free knowledge and access to information, please apply!
#brusselsjobs
https://jobs.euractiv.com/job/senior-eu-public-policy-specialist-242651

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/a2na/status/1593182282386665478

RT @MattGertz@twitter.com

The U.S. Senate has the votes to pass a bill that will secure marriage equality. It's hard to describe how unfathomable this was two decades ago, or how much work so many people put into this achievement. What a beautiful day.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1592985172110364673

Why bring this up now? Because it feels like the pendulum is swinging back toward open standards much like after the first dotcom bust. People (some for the first time) are getting a taste of the benefits of open standards. I think we will see a similar era of open standards and tech on the Internet, at least for awhile. But there will be similar attempts to find ways to embrace and extend these standards and lock people back into portals.

I see that @threadunroller@mastodon.social has made it to Mastodon. I have suspended it from religion.masto.host, and will suspend any other content scraping bots I become aware of.

Thread readers scrape content without the consent of the creator, move it to a website outside of the creator's control, and sometimes monetise it, as discussed here:

https://twitter.com/erynnbrook/status/1099086911463800832

We're asking Congress to pass a law to stop the judicial branch from charging exorbitant fees to read public court dockets, and to stop the courts from illegally using the fees to pay for unrelated court expenses. Public records should be free for everyone to access in bulk. https://fixthecourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Group-letter-on-OCA-11.16.22.pdf