Don Thompson @guardeddon@qoto.org

England, where politics and commentary is completely normal:

Reform got exactly zero seats, and the pundits can't stop talking about them.

the Greens got 159 seats, and no-one from the Greens is interviewed, and no-one on tv is talking about them or to them.

RClone may be my new favourite piece of open source software.

It lets you sync and/or mount a variety of cloud file storage providers (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) without having to install their proprietary apps that are increasingly being sagged down with surveillance, pointless redesigns and AI BS.

On macOS, for mounting, you can use MacFUSE, or FUSE-T if you want a userspace FUSE implementation without having to install a kext.

https://rclone.org/

Spectacular timelapse capturing an entire night from sunset to sunrise over the ALMA Observatory on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

Video Credit: ESO/C. Malin (christophmalin.com)

A number of people asked about the mini 10" rack I used in my last video, so here's a quick 3rd channel video where I go through it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-cdA50bpU (thanks to DeskPi for sending it!)

On what would have been the late Sir Terry Pratchett's 76th birthday, a favourite quote of his:

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys & there is empirical evidence that they exist. – Terry Pratchett (b. 1948)

Our Advisory Board has published a Draft Note for W3C's Vision

"Technology is not neutral; new technologies enable new actions and new possibilities, and we must take responsibility to address the actual impact of our work...

W3C’s Vision for the World Wide Web

The Web is for all humanity.

The Web is designed for the good of its users.

The Web must be safe for its users.

There is one interoperable world-wide Web."
https://www.w3.org/TR/2024/NOTE-w3c-vision-20240403/

This apparently touched a nerve; I had no idea. Check the comment thread.

My own major gripe with passcodes is that I could never find a simple straightforward explanation of what they were and how they were to be used. I have a decent understanding of asymmetric crypto and PKI and key exchange and JWT and so on, so if you can’t explain it to me, you have a big problem.

https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/112339186728840038

@mart_brooks @revk @bloor installing jitsi for me and using it with Firefox was one of the smoothest experiences I ever had. No background apps with security holes running on my computer neither.

🔥 🔥 🔥

«This is the result of taking #technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when “management” is synonymous with “staying as far away from actual work as possible.” And when you’re a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You’re not a user, you’re a parasite, and it’s these parasites that have dominated and are draining the #tech industry of its value.»

The Man Who Killed #Google Search
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

The eight-bit Z80 is dead. Long live the 16-bit Z80!

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/26/long_live_16_bit_z80/

Yes, they are harder to solder, but there's way more potential

<- by me on @theregister

ActivityPods: Federated Solid Pods
I want to try it now! 😅
#activitypub #solid
https://wedistribute.org/2024/04/activitypods-federated-solid-pods/

"#ActivityPods is a combination of two #W3C standards: #ActivityPub, and the #Solid specification. The first standard is for data federation and networks, the second is for data storage and access. The ideals of both projects put together create a compelling vision: data control, across user applications, in service to communication across the web."

https://wedistribute.org/2024/04/activitypods-federated-solid-pods/

PEOPLE, I BEG YOU
post links directly to the source, don't use Apple News or Bitly or other links hijackers. if they decide to change the service or go out of business, we have lost link to the original source.

keep the web as open as possible. say no to link shorteners and traffic hijackers 👍🏾

When I was a physics undergraduate, my supervisor was known for writings "WORDS" and "DIAGRAMS" on everyone's work, because students tended not to explain what they/we were doing. This was good advice.

Today when marking, I'm forever writing "BE SPECIFIC", because there are plenty of words and diagrams, but OMG the content is often so vague and it's unclear whether there is any meaning at all. All puffed up and completely empty.

Is this what the internet and marketing speak has done to us?

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.

— P. J. Plauger

My favorite CPU - yes, I'm weird, I have a favorite CPU - is being discontinued after a 48-year run. FORTY. EIGHT. YEARS. #Z80
https://www.hackster.io/news/zilog-calls-time-on-the-venerable-z80-discontinues-the-standalone-z84c00-cpu-family-723594464754

@tchambers @fediversenews

#Flipboard seems to be doing a pretty good job of easing into federation slowly. I think they had an established product and market first, though.

@ScottStarkey @fediversenews Agreed, @Flipboard is a model at how one does this....