Life is Tetris
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@lydiaconwell
> Also DumpTheGuardian
I'll have to think about this. I agree with the diagnosis but I'm not so sure about the treatment plan. Yes, even the good journalists employed by The Guardian are compromised by their owners, advertisers, and editors, as well as the self-censorship that comes with working for a comprised publication. And yet, it seems to me that refusing to link to the useful articles there is like refusing to link to good software projects because they're hosted on GH.
@srijan another decision tactic I have heard is, toss a coin and see which side your mind wishes it would fall. This is to actualize individual preferences, and may not help with cold data-driven decisions.
Life is Tetris
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WINZ is using MailChimp to send email. Email. A public service agency is paying a private company in the US to send email for it. Seriously? WTF.
I've been saying for ages that NZ Post ought to be pivoting into hosting email. Handling large-scale mailouts like this is a classic example of a service they could actually be making money out of, doing the digital equivalent of their traditional business.
@ramin_hal9001
> never going to work
I haven't dug too much into alternatives, but tacitly hard-selling books doesn't seem as bad as, say, advertising. Even GNU sells manuals, for example, for FLOSS likely not as well-designed.
We are spoilt by quality stuff like SQLite and Fabrice Bellard's software being available for free, but let us also recall the difficulties other equally-widespread software like curl had. Donations and support subscriptions only seem to work in a select few instances.
@strypey
> costs of personal domain name
Maybe subdomains should be public infrastructure? Or 2nd-level domains should be cheaper? Every citizen should have the option of choosing, say, a name.id.nz
I wonder about the details of why subdomains as ID failed. People get used to whatever ID is in circulation. Govt. ID, phone number, e-mail ID, Instagram handle, etc.
@ramin_hal9001 as I recall reading, Shen is production-ready. What other thing would you suggest the author do to monetize it? Or should he not monetize it? Even GNU/FSF are clear on "free as in speech, not as in beer".
Life is Tetris
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@siderea
> But Mastodon doesn't have a corporate owner, does it?
Technically it does; Mastodon gGmbH, who own all trademarks for this use of "Mastodon" and related logos etc, as well as copyright on the source code (unless they let contributors keep their copyright?).
But the fediverse? No, that doesn't have a corporate owner.
This is an example of why it's important to say "fediverse", not "Mastodon", when you're talking about the network that includes servers running the Mastodon software.
Life is Tetris
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Life is Tetris
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afaik: Each entrepreneur can use their own Mastodon instance (or other Fediverse Software). Whether people connect with it is not up to Mastodon, not to Fediverse.
imho:
If commercial providers were cooperative, they would have had their own network long ago. It also seems strange to me, this attitude of entitlement, that people who operate the servers on a donation basis and mostly in their free time, should still offer free platforms to corporations for their own profit? (1/2)
Life is Tetris
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Personally, I vote for the latter, because I would like Nazism to tank Twitter, and a mass migration of all decent people from Twitter to the Fediverse seems like the most likely way for that to come about.
But I completely respect the other position. I think, "No, we have a good thing going, I don't want it to be changed" is a very legitimate position. I lived through the September That Never Ended; I am very sympathetic to that position.
What I do *not* respect is the ridiculous position of slamming the door in some people's faces and then being pissy they didn't come on in.
4/
Life is Tetris
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My mom got preteen me a used computer velcroed into a suitcase and a stack of BASIC books from the library. Without any help i tought myself to program. Not because i was a some prodigy, but because BASIC was easy and I found it interesting. (Being autistic and able to hyperfocus probably helped ;) ).
Fledgling geeks these days usually have to contend with all the complexities of JS frameworks, and dependency managers, and piles of assumed knowledge.
It's SO much harder.
2/?
Life is Tetris
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Another shameless plug for the Simple range of apps for Android. I've installed a bunch of them using F-Droid. I love them so much I wish Tibor Kaputa (the developer) would put out a Simple OS; a deGoggled Android fork with all the Simple apps as defaults, and the Simple aesthetic applied to the UI of the whole OS.
Android #FreeCode #FDroid #SimpleApps
Life is Tetris
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#TIL that @semaphore (fork and continuation of Pinafore) can can support more than one account in the same browser. Check out a running example here:
https://semaphore.social
Also that it may be able to function as a web app for Friendica, as well as Mastodon. I'm having a few teething problems, but I'm hoping that I can now flip over to my Friendica account to post long rants, and then flip back to my Mastodon account to boost them 😀
#Semaphore #Friendica #Mastodon #FediApps Pinafore
Life is Tetris
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I believe that the task of a university should be to be a community curates knowledge; of an academic, should be to learn, to discover new knowledge to be curated.
Under this model, a young person is welcome to join the community and collaborate with more experienced academics in the process of discovery, but it is their responsibility to act to acquire knowledge, not anyone else's to impart knowledge to them. #2/3
Life is Tetris
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"best practices"
are usually "best practices for big companies"
Maybe it will work for you (great!), but there are plenty of reasons why a "best practice" might not be the "best" for your situation.
@FinchHaven@mastodon.sdf.org
>> Bluesky doesn't federate yet
@micahflee
> so defensive, lol
So escapist, lol? Are you expecting the obvious to go away in the face of pejoratives?
Life is Tetris
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I wish David were still alive to debate this with me. But I don't think classical vanguardism collapsed. Or if it did, it didn't take long to rebound in a new form, having swapped out one set of content (academic Marxism) for another set of content (identity politics).
Life is Tetris
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This fits well with the politics of morality policing, which has become dominant in what's often mistaken for the radical left (actually a united front between middle class liberals on both centre-left and centre-right). It's completely ineffective at changing anything. But it allows middle class activists to erect a hierarchy of moral purity, put themselves at the top, and heap scorn on anyone who doesn't follow the impractical "ethical" commandments they issue from on high.
(2/2)
@strypey I am not in Aoterea but one thing I have seen taxpayers do is think that they have rights to something because they have paid their taxes. If their tax money hasn't been used enough for social purposes and parts of society have a problem, it is not their problem. It looks like politicians are good at externalizing both costs and impacts 🙁
@Hamishcampbell
> news needs to be 4opens and in public
Some "mandatory" categorization might also be in order where it is clear which sector is being reported on.
e.g. the #WHO is apparently a private organization (funded by big pharma) but you wouldn't guess that from the news reporting that talks about in the same breath as public instituitions.
