Matt Panhans @mpanhans@librem.one

🌟 Project Release Announcement Time! 🎉

I wrote a WebUSB extension for Firefox.

This lets web pages access USB devices (with your permission). This has long been supported by Chrome, but Mozilla has not wanted it, at least by default. Fortunately, because add-ons are a thing (for now. make sure to keep fighting for this!), it's possible to change that!

Common reasons for wanting this include programming microcontrollers, 3d-printers, smartphone bootloaders, and similar "physical computing" projects.

This works on Windows, Linux, and macOS

You can get the source code here: https://github.com/ArcaneNibble/awawausb

In order to make this work, you will need to install a small program on your computer. This is explained in the README. You can then install the .xpi file (on the GitHub Releases page) into your browser (which was _just_ auto-approved while I was typing this announcement up).

Please boost (if you want), test, report bugs, etc. etc. (although do keep in mind that this code is entirely written by a single catgirl)

i think this is the perfect type of project to drop late on a sunday / very early on a monday?

Suspiciously supportive. | More comics: https://rooniecomics.com/comics/always-there

This is how we can keep building a web worth wanting in the face of disingenuous veto players [1] and subversion of standards venues based on degraded competition [2]. The humility to admit your first idea is *probably* wrong (at least in part), combined with urgency to fix real problems for users and developers, puts a premium on responsibility in leadership. I'm proud of the team for taking that seriously.

[1]: https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-internet-community/
[2]: https://www.mnot.net/blog/2026/02/13/no

I wrote about Zuckerberg's texts with Musk and how they undermine the principles of a fair and equal platform for everyone https://www.platformer.news/zuckerberg-musk-texts-trial-content-moderation/

The problem with Meta’s business model is that they’re beholden to shareholders, not their community. We are not publicly traded, we are publicly FUNDED.

Mastodon has no incentive to keep you addicted. Our incentive is to make you happy, and help you build friendships, because it’s the right thing to do for you, and it's the right thing to do for humanity.

If you believe in a better way forward for our digital social spaces, please help support us by donating: https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors#donate

(2/2)

@mpanhans @carlrichell Hi, this research could point to who… https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

Happy π Day! And Albert Einstein was born #OTD 147 years ago!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

Isaac Newton used infinite series to compute π to 15 digits, later writing "I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these computations".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#cite_note-Newton-60

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

Einstein at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1630

#books #mathematicsDay

Mastodon, you are a influence...

Since I joined I have ditched most subscription stuff like Spotify, Amazon and Netflix.

Made the swap to Linux.

Started painting.

Now I am considering whether or not I could be a Person Who Bikes Places.

Manet's famous painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère never appealed to me. But now I realize its genius and my spine tingles every time I see it.

The perspective looks all wrong. You're staring straight at this barmaid, but her reflection in the mirror is way off to right. Even worse, her reflection is facing a guy who doesn't appear in the main view!

But in 2000, a researcher showed this perspective is actually possible!!! To prove it, he did a photographic reconstruction of this scene. Check it out in my next post.

This blow my mind.

(1/3)

It's the first sunday of March and it's Digital Independence Day again.

If you would like to spend some minutes to install an independent messaging app and get a cool indie messaging address, you might have a look at:
https://imday.de/en/

And don't panic: It's easier than you might expect.

#did #didit #xmpp #whatsapp #diday

🐧 Just dropped the 2026 Linux tier list, but instead of ranking best to worst, I'm showing which distro fits YOUR journey.

Beginner? Intermediate? Advanced? This tells you exactly where to start (and where NOT to start)
https://youtu.be/6ip-S5QyzuI

WhatsApp can access virtually all of it 3 billion users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications,” according to a lawsuit filed against Meta. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72183413/1/dawson-v-meta-platforms-inc/

"The joy of not being sold anything"

📷 Photographer: unknown
Artist: unknown (?)

#StreetArt

Einstein realized that gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime, but earlier mathematicians had guessed that it's due to the curvature of space.

On the 18th of August 1869, the eminent mathematician Sylvester gave a speech arguing that mathematics is not separate from physics. He later published this speech in the journal Nature, and added a footnote raising the possibility that space is curved:

“the laws of motion accepted as fact, suffice to prove in a general way that the space we live in
is a flat or level space [...], our existence therein being assimilable to the life of the bookworm in a flat page; but what if the page should be undergoing a process of gradual bending into a curved form?”

Then, even more dramatically, he announced that the mathematician Clifford had been studying this!

“Mr. W. K. Clifford has indulged in more remarkable speculations as the possibility of our being able
to infer, from certain unexplained phenomena of light and magnetism, the fact of our level space
of three dimensions being in the act of undergoing in space of four dimensions (space as
inconceivable to us as our space to the supposititious bookworm) a distortion analogous to the
rumpling of the page.”

This started a flame war in Nature which the editor eventually shut off. Clifford later wrote about his theories in a famous paper:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Space-Theory_of_Matter

But now I hear that maybe Clifford even did experiments to TEST his ideas by measuring the polarization of the skylight during a solar eclipse in Sicily on December 22, 1870:

• S. Galindo and Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota, Clifford's attempt to test his gravitation hypothesis, https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.09230

The amazing prehistory of general relativity!

Welcome to the Public Domain, THE MALTESE FALCON (1930) 🦅💎

🕵️ Sam Spade is on the Case of the Disappearing Copyright as The Maltese Falcon novel joins the public domain.

Learn more ➡️ https://blog.archive.org/public-domain-day-2026/

#PublicDomainDay #CopyrightFree