lobster @Lobster@social.cleverlibre.org

@Framasoft released PeerTube v6 update https://joinpeertube.org/news/release-6.0 and celebrated 5 years of Mobilizon, the alternative to Facebook Groups and events, so it’s time to support their amazing contribution to the Fediverse and their future actions in 2024 https://soutenir.framasoft.org/en/; Misskey, the Japanese most popular fediverse microblogging platform, published its 2023 recap https://fediversereport.com/misskey-2023-recap/

There was a busker in town today, an irish guy, decent singer, doing random Christmas songs.
We had a while to wait for our bus, so decided to sit on a bench and listen to him. Every small child that went past, he was pausing to talk and then singing stuff like jingle bells, rudolph the red nose reindeer to them. It was wholesome and a nice gesture from him.
May have thawed my cold dead heart a little 😉 even my child was smiling.

This is just a miracle.

People with lupus and other autoimmune diseases that were *severely* ill are now just cured. From struggling to walk a few meters to walking 10 kilometers, being symptom-free for almost 2 years 🥺

Very early phase of research, tested on 15 humans in total around the world.

They really just managed to turn off the false attack sign. So the disease is gone completely.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03968-6

#goodnews #AutoimmuneDiseases

Finally used #libreoffice for the first time. And it was flawless. I have it installed since a long time but never used it. I rarely have to open any documents, spreadsheets or presentations.

All the options made sense after all, did not even have to search for anything at all.

@libreoffice

#foss #opensource

Here comes the sun 2024 | The northern solstice on 21/22 December is our chance to celebrate the start of our annual journey back from the darkness into the light | Dr Pam Jarvis

#WinterSolstice #Solstice #ShortestDay
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/society/culture/here-comes-the-sun-2024/

@Lobster

I would also add, respectfully, that first timers scroll down that download page and check out the different flavors of Ubuntu. It's like ice cream! Somethin' for everyone!

Welcome to worldwide America-Europe-Israeli neo-Fascism.

For decades, racist groups such as the Heritage Foundation in the U.S. have been working towards undoing the democratic gains of the 20thC.

How have they got away with it?

eg, Nancy MacLean Democracy in chains (talk begins ~10 mins in): https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/scholar-to-scholar-talk-nancy-maclean-pre-history-likely-sequels-of-insurrection-us-capitol/

& Anne Nelson, Shadow network
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJFg5nTxgMk

#USPol #UKPol #EuroPol #Israel

A holiday tip for my #ActuallyAutistic comrades

You’re allowed to spend time by yourself in another room during family events.

You’re allowed to self regulate.

There is no shame in this.

@actuallyautistic

There comes a point where there is absolutely nothing more you can do to be sure about something.

Eventually, you have to let go of whatever you are worried about or you will just continue to worry with no resolution in sight.

The purpose of life is to live, not to live in fear.

The experience of a faultlessly operating device spontaneously updating itself with new firmware that introduces bugs and breaks functionality is almost uniquely frustrating, but also weirdly familiar on some deep archetypal level.

It's entirely as if human civilization, having grown up believing for most of its history in entirely imaginary demons, afrits and malevolent spirits, had to go and invent them the first chance it got.

If we're taking the effort to switch platforms, it may be time to move away from Centralized Messengers (like Signal/Telegram) and focus on Federated or Peer-To-Peer. (like Element/Delta-Chat) Removing any Corporate (vulnerable) control structure. Unfortunately, many of the decentralized alternatives are still overly techy 😉 However, they're getting easier 🙂

That being said Signal and Telegram are significantly more private and ethical than Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple; so it's very encouraging to see such a huge shift! 🙂

Centralized messengers are e.g. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Threema, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat: There is one provider and one application for the service. Everybody who communicates with somebody communicates via the servers of that provider. That doesn’t mean that those messengers are all the same: Some, like Discord and Instagram, are entirely unencrypted – the service provider (i.e. the company) can read and use everything you write. Some, like Telegram and Signal, publish the source code of the apps – that means that everyone can see and verify what the app does on their phone. Some, like Threema and Signal, are always end-to-end encrypted. Some collect more metadata – e.g. the data when with whom, how long, where you communicate – and some less. And so on and so on. Still, there are very privacy-friendly messengers among those – most popularly Signal and Threema, followed by messengers with a smaller user base such as Wire and Wickr. But if any of those messengers implement a feature you don’t like, you’re screwed. All of those messengers are app-reliant: You need to access the application of the service provider, otherwise, you’re excluded from messaging other people.

Federated Messengers
Federated messengers are messengers which rely on a fully open protocol (think of ‘protocol’ as ‘language’). The two existing protocols are XMPP and Matrix. Their main principle can be compared to email: You can register an account at any server (or host a server of your own), and communicate with any other account on any other server. Think of it like sending an email from your Gmail account to your friend’s Yahoo account: There are no limits as to how you can communicate, and if you dislike Gmail, you can just switch to any other email provider and send an email to your friend from your new address. Likewise, you are free to choose any app you like to use your account (people generally speak of apps as ‘clients’). Similar to how you can access a Hotmail email account from different clients (e.g. the Gmail app, Apple’s email app, Mozilla Thunderbird, …), you can access your XMPP or Matrix account through different clients or simply access your account from the web browser. There are people who prefer XMPP and people who prefer Matrix, I personally think that XMPP is the better protocol whilst Matrix offers an easier user experience for people who are new to federated messenger protocols.
An ideal choice for messaging may be Element which uses the Matrix protocol. Element is more organized than Telegram in that it supports a structure such as rooms and encrypted group calls like Discord.

Peer-to-Peer Messengers
Peer-to-peer messengers don’t rely on servers altogether – they just rely on one common protocol (‘language’). Briar, Jami, Tox, RetroShare are all examples of this. Among the three groups, they provide the most anonymity and security. However, this also means that you need to add your contacts manually – as your identity is protected, you can’t simply be identified by your phone number. On the other hand, they provide the comfort of not being able to fail. There is no server that can go offline and you don’t need to place your trust in the availability of the service on a specific provider. You will always be able to message your contacts – in some cases even without needing an internet connection. But pay attention: Not all peer-to-peer messengers support voice or video call functionality.

To be honest, I never stopped trusting books over the Internet, and, depending on the topic, older books over newer ones.

After all, before MGC, there was SEO, and before that there were stupid blog authors who wouldn't do proper research.

The only problem with books is that certain fields changed so quickly that they made books obsolete after a very short period of time. Also, editors got progressively worse at their job, to the point that I'm beginning to suspect they may no longer exist.

The things that “don’t matter” often do.

“All we have to do is x” is always followed by a bad idea.

The #answer to: how much do you love #Linux?