Karl Austin @[email protected]

This year, you won't be able to vote without certain photo ID in the UK. Most of the accepted forms are non-free, and are skewed towards the kinds of ID older people have. Keep your right to vote by getting a Voter Authority Certificate if you don't have other valid ID. Learn about it here: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/voter-id

For many, many years I have tried to convince SSOs (Standard Setting Organisations) that there is a problem with Open Standards, when they do not offer at least three things maintained in parallel:

1. The Open Standard
2. An #OpenSource reference implementation
3. An Open Source and publicly available validator to check compliance

A lot of the problems with Open Standards (unclear interpretations leading to non-interoperable implementations) could be avoided by having all 3 things available.

You don't have to remember everything to be a good programmer - Go Make Things: https://gomakethings.com/you-dont-have-to-remember-everything-to-be-a-good-programmer/

This reminds of college (in US terminology: highschool) students being encouraged to remember as many digits of pi as we can to show how "smart" we were... Ugh, Pi Day!

BREAKING: #Meta prohibited from use of personal data for advertising

Max Schrems: "Instead of having a 'yes/no' option for personalized ads, they just moved the consent clause in the terms and conditions. This is not just unfair but clearly illegal. We are not aware of any other company that has tried to ignore the GDPR in such an arrogant way."

https://noyb.eu/en/breaking-meta-prohibited-use-personal-data-advertising

Gotta love this Finally!

Gotta love tech journalists who describe Mastodon as "that impossible-to-use website." First of all, it's an app. C'mon. Second of all, aren't these the same people who write breathless explainers about the wonder of cryptocurrencies, which are not only impossible to understand but literally built from bullshit?

This this is the annual plea to fake a QA or testing emergency that delays your release until January.

@tiffanycli Actually, this isn't a first time. We already have SMTP for email, we had XMPP support by major vendors (yeah, it's "had" 🤷‍♂️), IRC was the chat protocol back in the days, RSS was the protocol for reading news.

We need to pay attention and not let such "was" and "had" happen to Fediverse.

BTW, the protocol is ActivityPub https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ and the Fediverse is much more than just Mastodon https://fediverse.party/.

#fediverse #mastodon #protocol #activitypub #opensource

BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired.

The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, a business that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space.

If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html

What’s the defense against large #mastodon instances beginning to #defederate from small instances, perhaps under the guise of #moderation overhead, disproportionate load or allegedly to protect their users?

Much like how email is technically decentralized but any #selfhosted people know that #selfhosting email is an uphill battle against the likes of Gmail, Outlook, etc.

It’d be a shame to see all this become #FediverseInNameOnly #mastoadmin

Facial Recognition Can Be Used For Behavior Enforcement

Calls To Outlaw Private #FacialRecognition Grow After Mother Booted Out Of Theatre For Being Detected To Work For Law Firm

#litigation #Law #privacy #biometrics #HumanRights #autonomy #socialCreditScores #digitalID
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/20/calls-us-facial-recognition-ban-grow-after-mom-booted-theater-over-her-job

Pretty fucking bold of these scientists to scrape one of my copyrighted photographs off the internet and then re-release it uncredited under a Creative Commons license because they used it for training data for an algorithm.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sample-images-of-each-class-of-the-self-created-dataset-for-early-pest-detection_fig1_366224366

Are folks really pressuring independent artists, authors, etc., not to promote their work here?

Do you also picket your local independent cafe and mom and pop stores? What happens if you succeed in shutting them down? That’s right, you end up with a McDonald’s in their place.

Please learn to separate capitalists from folks trying to survive under capitalism. Independent people trying to pay their rent isn’t advertising, it’s existing. What Coca-Cola does is advertising.

#fediverse ❤️ #indie

Shared by my Daughter
"I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are"

In response to "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"