What we need: lots of people, including individuals, small voluntary organisations, and small businesses, running online services using Free software, on a small scale, with decent export/import options
What the UK’s Online Safety Act encourages: people to throw in the towel and switch to a hosted/centralised service run by a rich, well-lawyered company, which can take on the risk and burden of compliance
The thing with obstructing those DOGE incels is it wouldn't be some massively brave sacrifice for a sysadmin/dev who slowed them down with clever, plausibly-bureaucratic/-accidental measures; you'd get fired then walk into a more fun job with people who love what you did. No one's having to stand in front of a tank.
One of my #COVID19 posts on #LinkedIn was removed for misinformation. Apparently, sharing Federal Reserve data and a link to 1,600 studies on COVID risks is now misinformation! (What really pisses me off is that I asked for a review of the decision, and it took seconds for them to confirm they won't restore my post.) So, now I'm boycotting LinkedIn for a while. If they want to go the way of Twitter/X, then they'll do so without my content driving engagement and ad views.
Hello EU people:
There is an EU citizen petition to ban the use of "conversion therapy" on LGBTQ+ folks (i.e., trying to de-LGBTQ us— a process often described as "torture"). If you're interested, you can sign it here:
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#/screen/home
Please especially take note if you are a national of Spain, Slovenia, Belgium, or the Netherlands; the petition needs about 5x as many votes as it has now, but also needs to hit a threshold in four additional countries, and those are the four closest.
More Tern jobs - these awesome roles are on small islands off the coast of Anglesey
https://www.environmentjob.co.uk/jobs/104587-anglesey-tern-spa-contract-warden-x3?from_alert=true
Just remembered I’ve still got the clip-on lenses I bought when I added 3D mode, brb just popping into the metaverse
We all deserve much better technology and that centralization gets in the way of that a lot.
Getting there is a very slow process, but we will keep pushing forward as much as we can.
In the meantime though, please do think, hard, about the technology you use, and about where control and pressure points exist, and how those might be used and abused.
I'm just going to leave Freedom of the Press Foundation's excellent guide to leaking to the press right here in case anyone happens to need it: https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/sharing-sensitive-leaks-press/
Sometimes you just have to take your best guess at which end to boop, and keep your fingers crossed that you get it right 😬
Steve:
frequent overthinker, compulsive fixer, digester-then-explainer, "why?" question relishing father, minor-irritant partner, excessive disassembler, original-form hacker, high-efficiency googler, borderline-competent car-fixer, expert-level car-breaker, faster-by-qwerty communicator, indiscriminate photo-taker, Leatherman owner.