Karl Austin @[email protected]
- https://twitter.com/karlaustin
- Work
- https://kdaws.com
Dad, husband, chief geek, MD & tea-boy
@kdaweb & @BackoopsUK, community volunteer, sometime photographer, Scout leader. Lover of technology.
Joined Nov 2022
The government have finally published the list of ID they will allow you to use to vote - six of the Government-accepted IDs are specifically targeted at older people, while almost none are aimed at younger people. https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/07/voter-id-its-far-worse-than-any-us-state/
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/electoralreform/status/1589597532539191296
I think Mastodon needs a better way of verifying links. Putting HTML potentially visible in a page is a bit 2000. Using .well-known, DNS or even proof of upload (to a specific location) would be better IMHO so as not to interfere with a site that might be in a CMS that blocks some of those.
A protocol for .well-known (had a quick Google, couldn’t see one) would be best IMHO.
Karl Austin
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Welcome and hello tooters. We'll be posting some content only on here, but all Twitter content will get cross-posted to here as well.
Anyone else in #Sheffield shouting at the radio every time the awful Supertram advert comes on?
Karl Austin
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... This is actually a privacy issue in Mastodon. Sure, the behavior is documented, but it is also highly counter-intuitive. Users would simply not expect this to happen and one of the basic rules of privacy design/engineering is that it's best not to surprise the user. Solution: there should be some informative message when this feature is used.
Karl Austin
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Make sure to understand that direct messages on Mastodon are not necessarily private. If you mention some Y else in a "direct message" to X, they will also get that! Surprise. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/
Karl Austin
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Hello Mastodon… be prepared for novice errors! I apologise in advance!!
Karl Austin
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Incredible. Musk's team literally fired people without knowing what those people even did. Some employees laid off by mistake, other employees were laid off on purpose but it turns out they're the only ones who know how to implement features Musk wants.
Karl Austin
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It’s interesting that the biggest communication challenge facing Mastodon communities is explaining that it’s basically a protocol and a network of independent, interconnected servers, which is what the Web, e-mail, even DNS and most of the fundamental services we use on the internet are, and always were.
It just illustrates just how much ‘Big Tech’ proprietary social media platforms swallowed up and walled off, if it’s now difficult to explain what the internet actually is!
40,000 rightwing fanatics just tried to take over an organisation of 5,000,000+ members and push it to the hard right.
Only 70,000 people stopped them.
The other 4,900,000+ don't know how lucky they are. https://twitter.com/cemycott/status/1588960865092792320
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/ProfDaveAndress/status/1588966349778587648
Karl Austin
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Lotta talk about replacing Twitter.
The better dialogue is how to get people to re-evaluate how they engage with the internet.
Personally, I'm convinced of two things:
- You can't 1:1 replace Twitter unless it's a similar top-down walled garden.
- Most people probably shouldn't want a Twitter replacement, since Twitter is bad for us.
Instead of finding/molding/creating a replacement, we should encourage people (and ourselves!) to focus on what they like most about internet interaction.
Should also have added that I also have a love (addiction to?) of 90s/00s dance/trance/rock/metal vinyl.
#Intro time for those that don't know me already:
- Started coding with VB in '95
- PHP/MySQL in '99
- Started hosting company in '00
- Soft. Eng. Degree
- Husband
- Dad
- Parish Councilor
- Scout Leader
- Community Centre Chairman
- Sometime photographer
- Pub quiz regular
- Watcher of F1
- Lover of #Sheffield
I love solving problems and making things better/more efficient for people. I especially like projects that improve local communities/benefit others.
For anyone that doesn’t know, but might care, you can find me on Mastodon now as well: http://tweep.uk/@karlaustin
One for @[email protected]
I joined Mastodon. It is very complicated. There are servers. I don’t understand such things. Someone set up a law one please. Or tell me how to. Or maybe there already is one? I wouldn’t know, I’m worse at tech than I am in Court.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/shitbarrister/status/1588967299142541312
UK government set to extract hospital data to Palantir system without patient consent https://reg.cx/46jn?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=auto&utm_content=article
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/TheRegister/status/1588550727848398850
Karl Austin
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So it seems that Elon Musk really *does* know how to grow a social media platform, just not the one he spent billions on.
Karl Austin
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Remember, remember, the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason, and plot
Back up your data while it is still there
So you're not screwed when it is not
Karl Austin
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@neil Useful to point out Favoriting a toot does not feed some recommendation algorithm like "Liking" a tweet does on the birdsite. It merely shows appreciation to the author of the toot and can act as another personal bookmarker, though there is also the Bookmark button.
Boosting a toot is much more valuable to help it get exposure across the network.
Now to work out why I’m sometimes getting really slow API responses from Mastodon server :/
- https://twitter.com/karlaustin
- Work
- https://kdaws.com
Dad, husband, chief geek, MD & tea-boy
@kdaweb & @BackoopsUK, community volunteer, sometime photographer, Scout leader. Lover of technology.
Joined Nov 2022
