Don Thompson @guardeddon@social.cleverlibre.org

I spoke with @Aditi_muses of the Hindustan Times about Signal's commitment to privacy in India and everywhere, the challenges of committing to privacy in the context of a tech industry driven by surveillance, and why metadata is not an afterthought.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/we-will-not-conduct-a-kyc-for-our-users-signal-president-meredith-whittaker-101696448237663.html

Devonian sandstone outcrop, Auchmithie

It was a grey day with occasional drizzle falling, so I concentrated on the impressive sandstone outcrops and made this long exposure photo of the incoming sea lapping around.

Prints etc: https://shiny.photo/gallery/auchmithie

#longexposure #landscapephotography #seascape #naturephotography #scotland #photo #blackandwhite

Some admins are sharing the balance sheet of the costs of running an instance.
It's so refreshing to see transparency on the internet and very helpful to understand what takes to make an open instance.

The anti-science movement is "organized, it’s well-financed, and it’s politically motivated. It’s doing a lot of damage to the country and to American science and scientists. And now it’s become a lethal force." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-scientist-warns-antiscience-conspiracies-have-become-a-deadly-organized-movement/

BBC Gives Up On Threads (By Instagram), Sticks With Mastodon https://darnell.day/bbc-gives-up-on-threads-by-instagram-sticks-with-mastodon

Oleksandr Shevchenko from Ukrainian Railways. Amazing stories, super guy.

It's coming together

#pixelfedApp #onboarding

Good morning. 600+ followers in less than 24 hours – you are amazing! Please give us some time to answer comments and follow back. Cheers!

Great piece on Ashton Kutcher's Thorn, which is pushing anti-privacy laws in the UK & EU

Thorn sells tech for corporate/police surveillance as a "solution" to child abuse & trafficking, even as service organizations & survivors question its efficacy.

https://www.thecut.com/article/ashton-kutcher-thorn-spotlight-rekognition-surveillance.html

Whoever did this deserves the freedom of the world…

@darnell : the BBCs thoughts on mastodon and the fediverse were very nicely outlined at the recent FediForum: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/1-b/

Expand your Latin

I've been playing with #GIMP recently, and here is one I am particularly proud of. This photo was a 6 second exposure of the moonrise over a river near #brisbane, and then I played with Simple Linear Interpretive Clustering Algorithms to cluster the image according to average pixel colour in segments of a given area using k-means clustering.

#mastoart #art #math

Jeez. This “Musk is evil, Mastodon is too complex, so Bluesky - and there are nice people on Bluesky” kind of argument is so simplistic

Get a decent app and Mastodon is not complex

And when the haters come - and they will come! - is the design of a network ready to cope with that? Mastodon, with some caveats is. Bluesky, we don't know.

Don’t get fooled again

https://euroblog.jonworth.eu/from-the-who-to-the-rolling-stones-or-why-i-will-not-trust-bluesky-just-yet/

every woman in academia needs to stop and read this 2021 profile of Katalin Karikó. it’s enraging and inspiring all at once.

and every man should read it for a very simple reason:

🗣 THIS IS WHAT A REAL GENIUS LOOKS LIKE

not Jobs.
not Musk.
not Zuckerberg.

not 99.99% of the Silicon Valley conartists calling themselves geniuses.

no.

it’s this middle-aged mother who works at a lab.

❝ Messenger RNA vaccine pioneer Katalin Karikó shares her long journey

https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/katalin-kariko-messenger-rna-vaccine-pioneer/

Today's fun UPS adventure: They have once again delivered a package to the wrong address. Rather than visit all of our neighbors looking for it, I just filed a clam. The form is very simple...

Then I get an email from UPS that looks super sketchy, but is legit. A link to a PDF that when loaded has a link you need to follow...

Okay so that works, then they need more info for the claim. There's a form which asks for the claim number but the dashboard has an empty column for claim number. Fuck.

Just seen a new favourite response to AI text. "Why should I bother to read something nobody could be bothered to write?"

Imagine a Pixelfed hosting service made just for you.

We take care of the tech stuff. You run your show and own your data.

Want to migrate? Simply cancel, and go on your own, or transfer to other services. You own the server and data.

With Pixelfed, you get the best of everything 😎

#soon #pixelfedHosting

✨ Simpler & Speedier

I'm refactoring the @pixelfed mobile app to improve onboarding and loading time in anticipation for the public release!

Some highlights:
- App opens much faster
- Easier sign-ups
- Deep linking
- Share target support
- Push Notifications

Shipping soon! 🚀

#pixelfed #pixelfedApp

NEW SUBSTACK

"Computer says guilty" - an introduction to the evidential presumption that computers are operating correctly

The first in a seres of posts on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions scandal

https://emptycity.substack.com/p/computer-says-guilty-an-introduction