Don Thompson @guardeddon@social.cleverlibre.org

What is We Distribute, exactly? 🤔

We Distribute is a CC-licensed open media project. It serves as a people-focused tech publication, with the goal of informing and educating people about three things:

1. Decentralized Communications
2. User empowerment
3. The future of the Internet

Most of what we do involves reporting on the day-to-day developments of the #Fediverse. In fact, our articles are ActivityPub-enabled, and integrate directly into the network.

However, the Social Web / Decentralized Social movement involves far more efforts and technologies that we think are also worth reporting on: #Matrix, #XMPP, #Bluesky, #Nostr, #SecureScuttlebutt, and #Solid all bring interesting pieces to the puzzle.

Our ultimate goal is to showcase the ongoing efforts to change the shape and form of the Internet itself, at a grassroots level. Join us on this exciting journey. #WeDistribute

I wish more companies had tech support like @beasts - problem resolved in minutes, clear explanation of what was broken, how to avoid the problem in the future, and info for follow-up. No scripts, no escalation, no call centre. So good.

High Street. Low cloud.

#Queensferry #Scotland #Edinburgh #MeerMittwoch #bridges #ForthBridge #MastoDaoine

@BBCRD @BBC_News_Labs @Connected_Studio @BBCRadio4 @BBC5Live

What works is publishing more content, your feeds are really thin at present!

I said it several times, but with Ivory's latest announcement, let me repeat it: we (the Mastodon team) are working on implementing Quote Posts. This is a much more complex feature than showing a preview for a link to a post, which is done at the moment by multiple clients.

It is a complex task and we have been working on defining the feature and the protocol-level details for some time. We are moving forward, and there are fewer hard questions to answers, but progress is there.

#ShotWithHalide #ShotOniPhone

"To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to asked to be told lies.

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery."

– Octavia Butler, _Parable of the Talents_

Marianna Spring's short series 'Why Do You Hate Me?' about her experience of trolling and her investigation of the trolls and conspiracy-theorists she has encounterd, is on BBC Sounds now.

https://bbc.in/3OAieaq

#SocialMedia #trolling #misinformation #disinformation #paranoia #ConspiracyTheory #MassShooting #LasVegas #USA #BBCVerify

My productivity life-hack: I write myself a "Don't Do" list, and every Thursday evening, I tick the ones I haven't done, feel good about myself and reward myself with a bottle of Rioja and a curry. You can use my list, or write your own! #productivityLifeHacks

@fesshole I work in advertising and can confirm.

"Multi--award winning" means they paid for a couple of tabes at a dinner or two.

If you don’t like it maybe, I dunno, don’t travel by private jet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68223602

App idea for Linux: An app where I set a regular amount that I want to donate each week/month, and then it locally and privately logs how much time I spend using the different apps on my machine and distributes the money accordingly.

With different options to blacklist some apps, weigh some apps more than others, always give X amount to some apps regardless of use, also give to things that won't be tracked (like the DE), etc.

#Linux #monetization #FOSSdevsNeedsFoodToo #MonetizingFOSS #Gnome

Taylor Swift adopted one of Elon Musk's worst moves: launching lawyers at a student who's doing a totally legal (and useful) thing: tracking of her highly polluting private jet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/taylor-swift-jet-tracking-legal-threat/

Our Keith Burzinski visited The Amp Hour podcast to talk about his work on Home Assistant and ESPHome - make sure to give this episode a listen! https://theamphour.com/657-automating-the-home-with-keith-burzinski/

📱 Facebook is 20. Author Jamie Bartlett investigates the new digital elite and the power of the vast platforms they control.

Gatekeepers, a new podcast on BBC Sounds https://bbc.in/4boLlHB

#Facebook #SocialMedia #PlatformEconomy #JamieBartlett #podcast #technology

The election year focus on 'deep fakes' is a distraction, conveniently ignoring the documented role of surveillance ads--or, the ability to target specific segments to shape opinion. This's a boon to Meta/Google, who've rolled back restrictions on political ads in recent years.

Put another way, a deep fake is neither here nor there unless you have a platform + tools to disseminate it strategically.

Bluesky opens to the public today and is taking a step toward federation. I talked with CEO Jay Graber about how it’s taking on the company that spawned it—and how its approach differs from Mastodon’s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/bluesky-launch-public-jay-graber/

A powerful plea from the Young Peacemakers Assembly, a group of 14-18 year olds from diaspora & refugee backgrounds who are calling for an immediate, bilateral ceasefire in Gaza
11,500 children have been killed there. Pls sign and
Stand with Children (
http://savethechildren.org.uk
)

🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/CarolineLucas/status/1754826641644146723#m

[2024-02-06 11:17 UTC]

Interesting announcement at #FOSDEM. The folks working on matrix (open source multiple messaging app) just announced that they’ve been working with WhatsApp to implement cross platform messaging.

This is because it’s mandated by the European Digital Markets Act.

Deadline for this to happen is March 7th (i think), when we see what is actually possible. Can a kind soul share a link to a helpful summary where I can learn more?

@bloor https://www.suncalc.org/ will give you the angles you need. Do you know the heights of the trees? (Or maybe you could fiddle with suncalc to work it out if you can get the date of the google imagery)