Jon ☎️ @jfred@mastodon.sdf.org

tbh i really do miss when technology was superficially bad by accident rather than now where it's deeply morally bad on purpose

We closed the gap between Stage0 and #GNU Mes: the Full Source Bootstrap is near!

The package graph is now rooted in hex0, a #357-byte binary & ASCII-equivalent https://github.com/oriansj/bootstrap-seeds/blob/master/POSIX/x86/hex0_x86.hex0

Make your distro #bootstrappable!

@fsf
@conservancy
@fsfe
@nixos
#reprobuilds #gnutools #NLnetFDN

@edsu 2) The Section 230 fight has been so exhausting, because I understand why people want something to stab big tech with. But it's really a bad local sharp implement to grab, because we've been fighting to protect intermediaries -- including bloggers, forums, and decentralised tools, for decades, and S.230 was one of the few bright spots. And both left and right think it's the devil.

The Pandemic Heroes Who Gave us the Gift of Time and Gift of Information

Moderna’s vaccine was apparently designed in just a few days, over a weekend, after the genetic sequence became available on January 10th, 2020.

Here’s why that date matters: the sequence was published ten days before China acknowledged the severity of the problem by admitting sustained human-to-human transmission and shutting down the city of Wuhan, on January 20th. The sequence was published while China—and the WHO, which depended on China for information—were still downplaying what was going on, in their official statements. The sequence wasn’t published in an official document. Instead, it was published independently in an open-source depository by Yong-Zhen Zhang, a professor at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and School of Public Health.

https://zeynep.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-heroes-who-gave-us-the

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25257544

#ZeynepTufekci #COVID19 #YongZhenZhang #OpenAccess #vaccines #censorship #genomes #PublicGenome #OpenSource

What you are referring to as GNU/Linux is actually three Emacs sessions in a trenchcoat.

Um um um um ummmmm... is this what it sounds like? Google is blocking browsers it doesn't "approve" of... apparently just letting in Firefox and Chrome? https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/08/guidance-for-our-effort-to-block-less-secure-browser-and-apps.html

The web as an open standards platform is rapidly falling apart. :\

One of the neatest tricks Big Tech ever pulled was convincing people that phones weren't general-purpose computers and should have different rules than laptops or desktops. These rules conveniently give the vendor more control.

Now these rules are moving to laptops and desktops.

It’s not that I told you so but… no actually I told you so.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/iab-europes-ad-tracking-consent-framework-found-to-fail-gdpr-standard/

#apconf2020's live parts are now open to non-registrants... in ~15 minutes I'll be doing my Q&A on "Spritely & Federation Futures" and there's plenty of other great talks lined up too! https://conf.activitypub.rocks/#live

See you at the Q&A!

We managed to release a podcast episode in the middle of hosting a conference!

This week we talk about the Ethics of Agency: https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html

Now time for the #apconf2020 opening keynote!

DRM is one of the real killers for new platforms. Paying customers can’t access services like Netflix or Hulu on their devices. They can’t even read their books on them.

DRM is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

It's VERY early, but I'm thinking of taking Spritely's logo in an intentionally very different logo than most social networks. Instead of the standard simple, modern, minimal SVG, something that looks very painted and intentionally like something an art student's videogame logo might look like instead

What do people think of this direction? Obviously a lot needs to be done

I believe this is satire????

Why obscurity through security (or whatever this may be called) is really really important.

https://discover.realvnc.com/blog/the-dangers-of-open-source-vnc-based-software

#floss #opensource #freesoftware #fsfe

Hooray! #PinePhone #postmarketOS edition running Firefox on my monitor via HDMI!

IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR ALL TIMELORDS

The deadline for petitions for new assignments is rapidly approaching and submissions postmarked after ...

... oh, who am I kidding?

#JustTimelordThings

Try our app, it's exactly like our website down to the pixel except for how it accesses your contacts, location, microphone, pictures and camera and it's not always nagging you to try our app.

Disturbing reports that Google Play is threatening to kick out Mastodon apps. See:

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/104763960269049818

https://toot.fedilab.app/@fedilab/104765191594914330

App stores have a track record of acting capriciously & are also easy targets for gov't censors (including Trump). This is why alternatives like @fdroidorg are so important for user freedom.

If unfamiliar: F-Droid is a free & open source app you can use to install other Android apps, with focus on free & open source software. Get it here:

https://f-droid.org/