Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

Hi, I'm new here. I'm a software developer who writes Haskell professionally and I have a strong interest in p2p technologies from both a technical and a political perspective.

I'm also a gardener who practices permaculture and natural farming principles and techniques.

#introduction #permaculture #gardening #haskell #p2p

Tech Companies Want Schools to Use COVID Relief Money on Surveillance Tools https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbpz7/tech-companies-want-schools-to-use-covid-relief-money-on-surveillance-tools

New BIND 9 maintenance releases:

BIND 9.11.32 - https://downloads.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.11.32/RELEASE-NOTES-bind-9.11.32.html

BIND 9.16.16 - https://downloads.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.16.16/RELEASE-NOTES-bind-9.16.16.html

@trox @fribbledom That’s kind of a sad story actually. IRC used to be decentralized, until EFnet (the “eris-free” network) declared they would decide who got to run servers, and only chose servers they controlled. This protection racket grew until everyone gave up, stopped trying to fix the issues with federating with untrusted servers, and all joined EFnet, pretending that it was not going to be a problem. Since then, EFnet’s abuses have forced several people to create their own IRC networks, but they have always been centralized, only federating with a cluster of centrally controlled servers. Freenode is one of those networks. Subsequently, Freenode’s abuses forced several people to create the OFTC (the “open and free technology community”) network, which is also centralized.

http://www.irc.org/history_docs/TheGreatSplit.html http://www.irc.org/history.html https://oftc.net/

how to not fail at being a civilized human being:

don’t say yes if you don’t mean it
show up when you commit to or cancel properly
they’re not being unreasonable expecting you to be decent

Mobilizon is a tool that helps you find, create and organize events https://joinmobilizon.org/en/

Ransomware’s Dangerous New Trick Is Double-Encrypting Your Data https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-double-encryption/

In case you missed it: the ThinkPenguin, Inc. Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 (TPE-R1300) is now certified to Respect Your Freedom. Read more about the new certification: https://u.fsf.org/3bk and learn more about RYF at https://ryf.fsf.org/.

PixelDroid is a FOSS app for using PixelFed (the Fediverse's alternative to Instagram). You can follow PixelDroid at:

➡️ @PixelDroid

The official site is at https://pixeldroid.org

PixelDroid has just been released on F-Droid at https://f-droid.org/packages/org.pixeldroid.app

You can find out more about PixelFed from its site at https://pixelfed.org

You can join a PixelFed instance at https://pixelfed.org/join

#PixelDroid #PixelFed #Apps #FOSS #Fediverse #FLOSS #Libre #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #Photography

Another happy ThinkPad. This is running Libreboot 20210517 (modified, versus what I plan to release). This laptop belongs to a good friend of mine, who sent it in for flashing.

Yes, it's today. I'm doing finishing touches. It's a testing release, but most machines are... tested!

A programme funded by the government of Kerala (a state in India) deployed 59,532 laptops with free software in school classrooms, running a distro called IT@School Ubuntu.

This might be one of the biggest deployments of GNU/Linux on the desktop!

https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/ict/1

The state of software in schools and what to do about it — #LibrePlanet by @noemu https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/the-state-of-software-in-schools-and-what-to-do-about-it/

- The entire US public school system was taken over by Google, Microsoft and Apple.
- Schools have good intentions but cannot spend a lot of time to adapt, thus prioritizing short-term/quick solutions.
- Some examples of using #freeSoftware in schools.

My sister's university is subscribed to the educational suites of both Microsoft and Google. Lectures are delivered on Microsoft Teams 🤦‍♂️

I just discovered https://librespeed.org which is a free and open source internet connection speed test service. Sorry speedtest.net, nothing personal but if it's #foss I just can't resist it. Bye!

#privacy

The thing I like about having a blog: when I have an important (well, to me anyway) observation to make about one or more of the world's ills, or a wry rejoinder to an ill-conceived comment from someone else, I can iteratively refine the wording of said observation/retort to ensure it does justice to the original inspiration, rather than being stuck with whatever half-baked, incomplete, typo-ridden off-the-cuff rendering I originally posted. I'm similarly pleased with Mastodon's "re-draft".

being allowed to be an asshole is freespeech too. But youd better learn how to set up an instance yourself if you care about being able to be that

Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says
https://www.wbur.org/npr/996284927/covid-19-was-a-preventable-disaster-who-ordered-report-states

(submitted by disabled)

Don't get me wrong, computers can absolutely help us regain our environmental efficiency. They just *aren't*.

Not as long as we're:
* constantly syncing everything to the cloud,
* expecting same-hour delivery,
* funding our clickbait via surveillance advertising,
* buying a new phone every year,
* using AIs because they're cool rather than useful,
* running bloated software & webpages,
* buying into "big data"
* etc

Computing is environmentally cheap, but it rapidly adds up!