"But the tech model of scale in which you grow rapidly and create network or path dependence, buy or destroy other entrants and then extract monopoly or robustly defensible rents doesn’t really work in [news] media."
-- TPM, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-facebook-punked-and-then-gut-punched-the-news-biz
"Being a small independent publish is never easy. It’s a bit like being a small proto- mammal (think a ferret or small rodent or perhaps a pygmy marmoset) in the late dinosaur age: rapid movement, lots of hyper-vigilance and stay lucky because someone may step on you. But in many ways the audience era is vastly better for us than the scale era, even though recent years have been some of the most challenging in the company’s history."
one company controls everything you remember from your childhood and has a vested interest in ensuring you never grow out of it
I wonder if someday people will learn about historical corporate acquisitions and mergers the same way we learn about the wars and invasions of empires and nation states today.
I make a habit of following a few twitter accounts in my RSS reader. One thing I really hate about most organizational accounts is the way they post THE SAME THINGS repeatedly several times a day.
Then again that's probably because I'm reading it in an RSS reader instead of having it scroll by in a giant timeline.
Though I really would prefer a Mastodon interface that was more RSS flavored than 'timeline' flavored. (A feed for everyone you follow, with things being marked read or not.)
Solar Power Employs Twice As Many As Coal In US #coal https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/29/solar-power-employs-twice-as-many-as-coal-in-us/
If you know anyone working on an ActivityPub project and they need any advice/feedback/help or want to spread the word, tell them to DM me! I am more than willing to help or spread awareness! #activitypub #fediverse
~1 million Creative Commons images on 500px.com are dissapearing tomorrow!
If you have the resources please install the Archiveteam's Warrior program and select the 500px project! https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior
irc is #500pieces on efnet
thank you (boosts very appreciated)
Open source's nature is to fade into the background and go unnoticed except by those whose work touches it directly. It is the plankton of computing. We all breathe, but few of us stop to think about where the oxygen is coming from.
-- "Producing Open Source Software" by Karl Fogel
The internet is just a big pile of shit!
The top serps (search engine results) for just about any health question you can think of all lead to sites that exist solely to get your clicks. They utilize no medical professionals whatsoever. The content is either spun by algorithms or purely anecdotal.
This is NOT what the internet was supposed to be. Thanks a lot, Google...
I'm so excited: I think my new WordPress plugin now fully implements the Feed Paging and Archiving standard! (Context above in this thread.) It may have bugs still but it seems to work. 🎉
I'm looking for review and feedback from WordPress and PHP developers:
I've been digging the #orgmode #Android app "Orgzly" lately, and it's motivated me to now try out #Spacemacs to hopefully use org-mode on the desktop. :) It's way different from the text editors I'm used to, but I'm going through the built-in tutorial, now. #emacs #fdroid
@jjg I seriously believe that a large reason why we don't see good quality productivity tools these days is because the GUIs have become so damn hard to use that they interfere too much with the development of the intended core technology, the thing that delivers real value.
A good quality GUI should get the @#@$ out of your way, **WITHOUT** the need for HTML rendering layers and all that modern abstraction bullshido.
@dredmorbius writtes about the same issue under the title “data is liability”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hn4r5/on_the_media_asks_what_can_we_learn_from_ashley/
I recently thought about this again in relation to “eternal messages” and Secure Scuttlebutt (#ssb). Why are we designing software to model conversations as a set of contracts? “I don’t like to design a system that doesn’t allow for any take backs. Human lives, our legal systems, or social conventions – they all allow for take backs wherever possible.”
https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2018-06-29_No_Take_Back
3/3
@joeyh once again the ocap people are right that "perimeter security is eggshell security"
(This is also why CORS is a failed security model)
@joeyh posted about two security vulnerabilities he uncovered http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/two_security_holes_and_a_new_library/
Notably the ActivityPub appendix warns about these kinds of security vulnerabilities: don't fetch from uri schemes you don't know (be sure your http lib doesn't accept file://) and don't fetch from localhost (though sadly it's hard not to do this one... "localhost-only" is mostly doomed).
But Joey's post also points out that even if you filter out the scheme and localhost yourself, redirects may bite you
"The money that #Stockholm University saves at the cancelled agreement with large science publisher #Elsevier will be used to publish research in full Open Access journals.
According to Stockholm University, the transition to #openscience is slow and the publishing in hybrid #journals, where you publish separate articles Open Access in an otherwise subscription-based journal, does not urge the development quickly enough."
"Like the railroads of colonial empire, US multinationals have consolidated control over the structural components of the digital ecosystem, which has been engineered for ruling-class dominance over social, political and economic life."
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-06-29-00-break-the-hold-of-digital-colonialism
Reclaiming RSS
“Before Twitter, before algorithmic timelines filtered our reality for us, before surveillance capitalism, there was RSS: Really Simple Syndication … As we move away from the centralised web to the peer web, it’s time to rediscover, re-embrace, and reclaim RSS.”